


Better Strangers

by gadgetorious



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Academy Era, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-11-06
Updated: 2013-04-24
Packaged: 2017-12-09 10:03:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 23,803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/772953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gadgetorious/pseuds/gadgetorious
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Leonard McCoy moves to San Francisco it's to start a new life. Something different from his old life. That means putting up with Starfleet policies, combat classes, idiot hospital employees and Jim Kirk.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Title:** Better Strangers  
 **Pairings:** Kirk/McCoy friendship, mentions of Kirk/McCoy  & McCoy/OMC  
 **Rating:** NC-17  
 **Summary:** When Leonard McCoy moves to San Francisco it's to start a new life. Something different from his old life. That means putting up with Starfleet policies, combat classes, idiot hospital employees and Jim Kirk.

 

Perhaps the fact that the organization that Leonard McCoy has promised to live and breathe for is called Starfleet should have been his first clue that this was going to suck. Incurable landlubber that he is, he has to wonder what he had been thinking when he’d made that decision. He rather suspects he was drunk at the time.

If the name hadn’t been a dead give-away, the simple reality that he hadn’t been able to make himself get on the transport sober should have been a giant fucking red flag. But somehow–somehow–it takes him until the minute he gets his class schedule for this to really sink in.

And sink in it does. It’s not even the first year minimum requirement of one foreign language course or the mandatory class devoted entirely to the two hundred thirty-six different ways to bow to various alien races that does it. It’s the not one, not two, but three various combat classes that are listed for the semester.

Surely there is some mistake. He’s a doctor, not a soldier; what the hell does he need three combat classes for? The only things he plans on fighting are disease and infection. Leave the Klingons to the people who actually signed up for that bullshit.

And then send them straight for their psych evals, he thinks darkly.

Who is he going to fight? He doesn’t even plan to get posted in space. In fact, if he can wrangle it, he’ll spend the next several years working right here on campus and then probably be done with Starfleet altogether. Maybe he’ll feel like going back to Georgia by then.

He snorts at the thought. Not likely. He should probably just consider the entire goddamned state part of the divorce settlement and be done with it. He’d only been half kidding when he told that kid he’d lost the planet in the divorce. He’s a Californian now at any rate (and hell if that doesn’t chafe just a bit.)

He quickly closes the message containing his new schedule and tosses his PADD on the bed. He has a shift at the hospital to get ready for; they are already putting him to work. He’d try to be bitter about that but he doubts it’s worth the effort. Not when it affords him luxuries like his own apartment and freedom from the curfews and campus restrictions the other cadets have to deal with. He’s still technically a cadet, but he does get some of the perks that posted personnel are entitled to.

But not being bitter is one thing, actually being pleased is another altogether and, quite frankly, probably a bit much to ask given his current state of mind. Which brings things full circle and really? Three combat classes? What are the other two going to try and teach him that he couldn’t fail to learn in the first?

He turns on the shower – actual water here in the staff housing block – and steps under the spray. These classes are going to be painful, a complete waste of his time and, probably most importantly, utterly humiliating.

He’s been here all of two days. _If_ you counted the first day he spend wandering around in a belligerent drunken fog, writing God knows what in the too-small blank spaces on the administrative forms and dry heaving into the bushes by the shuttle pad. He honestly doesn’t want to think too hard about that.

In that time, surely he’s met somebody that he could take this up with and get it fixed. (Because it is a mistake, and that’s what you do with mistakes; you fix them.)

The thing is, Leonard seriously doubts he’s endeared himself to anyone. He isn’t the most affable guy under the best of circumstances, and being so bitter and depressed you’d drunkenly indenture yourself to a space-faring organization when you hate space hardly qualifies as ‘the best of circumstances.’

He steps out of the shower and grabs his towel. Eyeing himself critically in the mirror he notes that he needs to shave rather desperately. He was scruffy enough when he arrived and he hasn’t touched a razor since. He doesn’t much like the idea of showing up for his first day of work looking like a vagrant and besides, it itches like hell.

“You’re a pathetic, miserable bastard, you know that?” he asks his reflection.

His reflection nods and reaches for his shaving kit. “Damn right.”

By the time he’s finished shaving he feels lighter. Like some of the burden he’s been carrying has been washed down the drain with his beard. _Well, mostly washed down anyway_ , he thinks, eyeing the gritty sink basin critically. It really is a good thing he doesn’t have a roommate.

Once he is dressed in scrubs and has his hair neatly combed he actually feels human again. Maybe not happy, but certainly more like himself and probably better than he’s felt since Jocelyn dropped the bomb on him that she actually wanted a divorce. He feels cleaner and lighter and ready to actually face the outside world at any rate. Two days in and he’s actually getting the fresh start he came here for, combat classes be damned.

He shakes his head and grabs his various accouterments on the way out the door. He’s decided to walk to Starfleet Medical. It’s far enough away that he could grab a ride but something, probably his general disdain for big city laziness, stops him.

His new feeling of freedom lasts precisely as long as his walk does. The minute he walks through the doors of the climate controlled hospital he has some kid throw up on his shoes and the new, optimistic Leonard McCoy dies before he really got a chance to live.

God fucking _dammit!_

He sighs and makes his way to the nurse’s station. They’ll know where he can get a change of scrubs. The nurses know everything.

He grimaces as his shoes squish unpleasantly but a blond nurse catches his eye and does an admirable job of suppressing her smile before gesturing at him to follow her. “Welcome to Starfleet Medical,” she says over her shoulder, managing to sound both amused and sympathetic. “First day?”

He glances down at his shoes and back at the nurse, giving a stiff nod to the back of her head. “Yes,” he tells her. Grumbles more like, glancing back to his shoes. He decides he doesn’t have time to take them off here and they’re not going to get much grosser than this. He squelches down the hall after her.

She leads him in silence through a door into a locker room and presents him with a set of blue scrubs, not unlike his own soiled set. He grunts an acknowledgement that’s probably a little ungrateful but he’s covered in vomit and he’s going to be late checking in for his shift, so she can excuse him for not being his usual charming self.

She gestures him toward the showers and he suspects her continued silence is to keep the laughter in but he lets it slide and passes her with a gruff thanks. He may not be amused but he’d half to be dead not to see the humor in the situation. But seeing and appreciating are two very different things and he just took a shower, God dammit.

It’s just sonics here in the hospital, which is just as well. They’re faster and more efficient and he can clean his shoes, which a water shower would be no help with.

Clean and changed he chucks his soiled scrubs in the chute and puts his shoes back on with a distasteful look. They may have been cleaned but something about putting on shoes that someone has just upchucked all over is still rather disgusting, and he’s not pleased to have to wear vomit-shoes for the next six hours, which is the length of his orientation and administrative torture session.

He finds his way easily back to the nurse’s station and blond nurse is waiting for him. He gives her a curt nod and she doesn’t seem to begrudge him his surly attitude, returning the nod with a friendly smile.

“Doctor McCoy?” she asks.

“That’s me.”

“It didn’t seem like the time for introductions earlier; I’m Christine Chapel. Dr. Lemley is expecting you, if you’ll follow me.” She starts down the hall in the opposite direction of the locker room and McCoy follows close behind.

“How are you liking the hospital so far?” she asks him.

“You’re kidding right?” he asks drily. A small quirk of her lips tells him she is, but she doesn’t answer. Possibly because they seem to have arrived at Dr. Lemley’s office.

“Dr. McCoy to see you sir,” Chapel says, poking her head in the door and then she turns back down the hall, leaving Leonard standing in the hall.

Dr. Lemley doesn’t look up from his PADD as Leonard enters his office.

“You’re late.”

Leonard scowls. “I apologize. There was an incident in the waiting area involving bodily fluids. I was unavoidably delayed.” What he wants to say is _’Some prick threw up on me as soon as I walked into your stupid hospital, you jackass’_ but that’s probably both a little juvenile and a lot unwise as far as opening lines with your new boss go.

“See that it doesn’t become a habit,” is Lemley’s condescending reply.

Leonard bites back _’What? Getting vomited on? Wasn’t planning on it,’_ but can’t quite bring himself to say _’Yessir’_ either. Lemley hasn’t even bothered to look at him yet.

Yeah, there has to have been a lot of alcohol that went into the decision to subject himself to this.

Eventually Lemley _does_ look at him, even if it’s just long enough to give Leonard the feeling he’s wondering what he’s still doing in his office and foist him off onto his assistant.

 _Jackass_ , Leonard thinks.

This is what he’s got to look forward to for the next few years, vomit in his shoes and pompous, self important, no-talent _administrative physicians._ Somebody, please, take him out back and shoot him.

The rest of his time in the hospital is kind of a blur. Not so much because time flies, because it really _doesn’t_ , but because it so goddamn mind numbingly boring that filling out one ridiculous, redundant form bleeds into the next.

His tour is equally underwhelming. Once he gets the basics – ER in the front, maternity in the back, psych upstairs, pathology downstairs – it’s really just a hospital. It has hospital rooms that look like any other hospital rooms and a cafeteria that serves food no doctor would recommend their patient eat.

It’s his first day and he’s actually watching the clock. This really does not bode well for the next four years.

It would be different if they’d let him treat somebody, but until all the administrative bullshit is processed he is only allowed to _observe_.

When he finally gets his freedom he nods a goodbye to Chapel and a petite nurse with flaming red hair named Rodriguez – go figure – he steps outside. It’s still light – it’s summer in California, it won’t be dark until well after dinner – he decides to pick up food on the way back to his room. If he doesn’t stop and eat he gets to take these shoes off that much sooner.

His room is dark and quiet. After the bustling brightness of the hospital it should be a relief. Instead it reminds him of everything that’s changed in the last year. Instead of coming home to his wife and daughter and that obnoxious cat that was always exactly where you wanted to place your next step he comes back to a dark room and a duffle bag, only partly unpacked.

Never mind that his relationship with Jocelyn was strained, alternately cold distance and heated arguments, he can still miss the _idea_ of what he had. And he misses Jo.

He toes off his shoes, deciding against burning them and dumps his bag of take-out on the small table.

Two chairs. He wonders if the other one will ever get used.

He changes into a t-shirt and a pair of sweats. His noodles aren’t technically hot anymore but they’re warm enough and he pulls up his schedule again while he eats.

Classes don’t start until Monday. It’s Wednesday now. Five days to psych himself up to take _Vulcan Physiology_ and _Conversational Andorian._ Oh, and the basic combat courses. How could he forget those.

He fishes around in his bag until he comes up with a bottle of something sufficiently alcoholic to make today suck less. He tells himself it’ll make tomorrow easier.

His glass is empty long before his plate is and when he finally falls asleep he’s _almost_ forgotten why joining Starfleet is possibly the worst idea he’s ever had.

~

  
Thursday morning shows more promise. At least Leonard makes it through the doors of the hospital without anybody losing their breakfast on him. He finds it slightly depressing that he’s counting something like that as a win.

Chapel gives him a nod as he passes her station and he returns it with a gruff “Good morning.” It’s a far cry from cheerful but it’s friendly enough. From what he’d seen yesterday, she and Rodriguez are more competent than many of the doctors. Besides, if there’s one thing he’s learned as a doctor, it’s that nurses are valuable allies.

Lemley is no more interested in Leonard than he was yesterday; he is clearly too busy and important to deal with lowly cadets, no matter how many initials they have after their name. But Leonard’s paperwork has all gone through and he’s cleared to start seeing patients so he isn’t too bothered. He’s here to heal people, not to pander to his desk jockey boss’s sizeable ego.

Work is slow today, classes haven’t started yet and the new cadets are still on their best behavior. He does get a couple of second-years who managed to injure themselves rearranging furniture in their new dorm, and a single third-year who he spends about ten times longer than necessary with just to get them to tell him about their completely curable if admittedly rather embarrassing problem.

When Leonard finally _does_ get a patient with something to complain of other than stupidity, he’s got him diagnosed and all but cured in half an hour. He’s good at his job, at least he still has that.

As he’s signing off on the kid’s chart, about to offer him a pat on the back and send him out the door, a man in scrubs and a coat identifying him as Dr. Kaya sweeps in like he’s gracing them with his presence and addresses the cadet–one Wilson Norman, poor kid–ignoring Leonard entirely.

“What do we have here?” Dr. Kaya asks Norman, holding his hand out for the chart without so much as a glance in Leonard’s direction. Which just means he misses the rather spectacular look of indignant disbelief he gets in lieu of the PADD.

He finally does turn to Leonard, who has what could be referred to as issues with authority under the best condition, he is just in time to see the flaring nostrils and the arms crossing over his chest. “I asked for the chart, cadet,” he says.

“Actually, you didn’t. And you certainly didn’t say please.” Leonard’s expression could be called a smile¬–technically.

“I believe I made myself clear.”

“Oh, you did,” Leonard returns, both eyebrows high on his forehead. “In fact, I think you stopped just short of snapping your fingers for it. Which, by the way, is the only thing that stopped you from _getting_ the chart and in a very uncomfortable way.”

Kaya looks down his nose at Leonard, quite a feat for a man nearly four inches shorter than him. “What is your name, cadet.”

“Now we’re getting somewhere. Leonard McCoy. And it’s Doctor.” His good Southern upbringing demands he offer his hand to shake now but frankly he just doesn’t want to. Instead he turns to poor Wilson Norman, now squirming uncomfortably on the bed and looking about ready to bolt and says, “You’re good to go kid. Hit the pharmacy on your way out.”

Thus dismissed the cadet all but runs from the room, offering a weak thanks on his way out. That leaves Leonard alone with Dr. Kaya. He ignores him.

It’s working splendidly until Kaya, ego bruised, begins gibbering about insubordination. Leonard doesn’t even glance up from the PADD he still hasn’t handed over to the prick next to him.

“You don’t outrank me here,” he tells him, sounding almost bored.

Kaya’s chest swells until he thinks it’s in danger of exploding. “I beg to differ. You’re a cadet! I’m¬–“

“I don’t care what you are,” Leonard says frankly, finally glancing up to Kaya’s face. Well, up-ish. “Unless you’re a walking medical encyclopedia, you weren’t more qualified to make that call that I was. I’m not an intern; I’m a doctor and I don’t appreciate my judgment being called into question just because your office is bigger than mine. If you have a complaint about anything other than me doing my job, I’d be happy to hear it,” he lies. “Otherwise I believe it’s time for lunch.”

He is getting hungry so when he brushes past Kaya he heads for the cafeteria despite the fact that it actually _is_ lunch time and he’s going to end up making mindless small talk with whoever happens to be sitting at whichever of the tables Leonard chooses.

Rodriguez and another med-track cadet named Piotr Zajak, as it turns out. Rodriguez offers him a smile, which he makes a valiant effort to return. He’s pretty sure it just comes out as a grimace.

“Get barfed on again?” she asks brightly.

He chuckles darkly. “Worse. Had a delightful conversation with a charming man by the name of Dr. Kaya. Or so his nametag tells me. If I’m gone tomorrow I was fired. I wish I could say it’s been a pleasure.”

Piotr chokes on his sandwich and Rodriguez laughs.

“I’m glad my imminent unemployment could brighten your day.”

“You won’t be fired,” Rodriguez says, still too cheerful by half. “Kaya’s an ass and the only one that he doesn’t drive up the wall is Lemley. Which I suspect has something to do with the fact that he never hears him talk; Kaya’s too busy licking his boots.”

“Oh, good. The only person who likes the guy is my direct senior. My job security is assured,” Leonard’s mouth quirks up despite himself. Rodriguez makes it hard to stay grumpy. She could deliver the news that we was being fired herself and he’d probably thank her. He’s just having a bit of trouble getting to upset about the prospect of losing a job he’s not even sure why he wanted in the first place.

Piotr gives one last cough, his eyes watering and mutters “Seriously, you’re fine. Try being the guy’s intern.”

Leonard makes a sympathetic face. “You’ve made your point,” he concedes. “It could always be worse.”

Lunch passes–dare he say it–pleasantly, and what do you know, he’s made a friend. Wouldn’t his mother be proud.

When lunch is over he can give Rodriguez a genuine smile and he shakes Piotr’s hand warmly. He still has the rest of a dull afternoon to look forward to but eventually it ticks by, perhaps no faster than this morning but at least not so unpleasantly.

Still, this is going to be a long few years. If he makes it that long.

Dinner is take-out again. Greek this time, though he’s not impressed and probably won’t be visiting that restaurant again anytime soon.

After dinner he pulls the bottle out again. It’s nearly empty. Tomorrow is Friday. The most important thing on his to-do list has just become _find a decent bar._

He sips from his glass slowly, letting the warm feeling spread through his limbs and the sleepiness creep over him. This is the very last of his stash from Georgia and he’ll be damned if he’s not going to savor it.

When he falls asleep the bottle is still sitting on his table, completely dry. He dreams of hot, sticky nights on the porch and the old tire swing in the back yard.

~

Friday is much the same: boring but vomit free. He eats lunch with Piotr in almost complete silence. Piotr is a quiet guy; it’s one of Leonard’s favorite things about him.

Leonard does four physicals that afternoon, three of them new recruits and one of them an engineer being transferred off planet. The most exciting part of his day is the kid that comes in with a dislocated thumb, and he’s there and gone in under twenty minutes.

He changes into civvies in the locker room, and by the time he leaves the hospital he needs a drink just to counteract the sheer drudgery of his life. We wakes up in his bare, empty room, goes to his grossly under-stimulating job and then back to his empty room. His unfortunate meeting with Kaya seems a distant memory now and if not for the dirty looks he gets in the halls, he might think it never happened.

The first bar Leonard finds is a little loud for his tastes but it serves alcohol and that’s his only real criteria at the moment. He makes a mental note to find something farther from the campus in the future as he places his order and finds a seat somewhere in a corner, far from the press of young bodies.

But the young bodies come to him anyway. A man slides into his booth across from him with a charming smile. He’s young, Leonard notes but closer to his own age than to some of the teenagers he sees around campus. Thank fuck.

“Can I help you?” He intends the question to come out flat and uninviting but he can’t help his eyes from running down the man’s chest and dark, muscular arms–completely ruining the effect. And they’re _great_ arms. But when the man’s smile grows into a bright, handsome grin Leonard decides it’s not worst thing that’s ever happened.

He even smiles back.

“Maybe I can help you,” the man says. “Can I get you another drink? I’m Kahil.”

Leonard shakes the offered hand and gives Kahil a nod. _Why the hell not,_ he thinks. It’s not like he’s married.

Kahil proves to be friendly and he’s incredibly good looking, if not exactly a brilliant conversationalist. Thought honestly, the more drinks Leonard has the less he cares. And his absolute favorite thing is that he looks _nothing_ like Jocelyn.

Once he realizes that it’s inevitable that they leave together, really.

It’s still warm outside when they leave. The heavy air does nothing to sober McCoy up and he’s still smiling and dizzy when he climbs naked onto Kahil’s bed and throws and sloppy grin over his shoulder.

He revels in the feel of warm hands on his skin, sliding over his back, his hip, tugging through his hair; the rhythmic slap of skin on skin, the rough bite of teeth against his shoulder, his neck and one memorable occasion, his thigh.

With Kahil inside him he forgets what he hates about messy, drunk sex and just enjoys himself. It’s not perfect, but it’s a hell of a lot better than going back to his empty room again before the sun had even set would have been.

Leaving Georgia was freeing in a way and he wouldn’t go back to Jocelyn for all the tea in China, but the truth is he’s a lonely. With a warm body next to him, it’s easy to forget that.

Afterward he falls asleep in Kahil’s bed. When he wakes it’s early morning, Kahil is still asleep and Leonard is sober. Definitely time to leave.

It’s barely six o’clock on a Saturday morning, the sun muzzy through the thin morning fog, which is already starting to burn off. He decides to make his way back to campus on foot, he’s earned this walk of shame. It’s his first in years; first since his first few weeks with Jocelyn, and he intends to enjoy the experience.

A small coffee shop catches his eye as he meanders down the street in yesterday’s clothes and he stops in for a cup – black, no sugar. He sits with his coffee by the big windows in the front of the shop and people watches.

He can’t even remember the last time he did this. Can’t remember the last time he cared about anything other than what was going on at work or his own imploding marriage.

But the marriage is history and there’s absolutely nothing interesting going on at work, Lemley makes sure of that, so really what Leonard has going for him right now is this cup of coffee and the fact that he has the next two days to explore San Francisco. If he’s ever going to have to call it home, he’s really going to need to find a better bar.

He spends the day unpacking his bags and exploring the city. Which is to say, he spends sixteen minutes unpacking his bags, and the rest of the day exploring the city.

It’s different from Georgia and Leonard tries not to automatically place that fact in the _con_ list in his mind. He’s marginally successful. The ocean is nice and the bridge is beautiful but it’s noisier and more crowded than is his preference.

He uses the cities various forms of public transit and pokes around in shops for the better part of the afternoon. He could just pull up a map on his PADD but it’s not really any substitute for seeing with your own eyes. Besides, it’s not like he has something better to be doing.

Eventually he finds a number of small bars, far enough from campus that they won’t be packed with people who are still excited about being old enough to drink alcohol, but close enough that the cab fare back to his room won’t cost more than his night of drinking either. He makes a note to try them each out and points himself back in the direction of Starfleet.

When he gets back there’s a comm from his mother waiting for him, which he quickly answers, and one from Jocelyn’s pet shark she calls a lawyer, which he doesn’t. He tells his mother he’s alive, he arrived and been put to work, that she can stop worrying and that she is not, under any circumstances, to try and feed him; he’s eating just fine, thank you very much.

He hasn’t been home –back, _not home_ , he reminds himself – twenty minutes before the oppressive silence starts to get to him. It’s still bright outside, too early to start drinking. He lies back on his bed, a tiny single mattress, smaller than any bed he’s had since his freshman year of college. He’s going to have to do something about that.

Having room for a nightlife aside, he’s grown accustomed to having more space to stretch out. Even when his marriage was falling apart he’d wake to find his limbs sprawled on Jocelyn’s side of the bed, more out of habit than any desire to be close.

Now he’s just surrounded by the echoing loneliness of his room, lying like the dead, arms crossed over his chest, on a tiny mattress too small for a single man, let alone company. _On the bright side,_ he thinks, _the emptiness makes the room seem bigger._ He’s sure one he fills it up it will sink in that his entire life is now set in a tiny bedroom/living room with a sad counter against one wall that he’d heard somebody refer to as a kitchenette.

He finds it inside himself to at least remember to be grateful he gets his own bathroom.

He eats in the mess that night. If he finds eating in what amounts to a school cafeteria demeaning, he’s feeling zen enough from his walkabout that he puts up with it for the benefit of it being fast and close. Lately food is really more of a means of filling his stomach with something to help absorb the alcohol than anything else. He’d intentionally failed to mention that in his comm to his mother.

When he’s done with his dinner he waits until dark and grabs a tram off campus. The bar he’s chosen for tonight is in a small brick building that must be at least a hundred years old and it’s still mostly empty.

He orders a bourbon and takes it to a table near the back to sip it for a while. Except that when he gets there he realizes that maybe this was a bad idea. He has nothing to do but think, he either needs to do something or get more alcohol. The bar is still too empty to start looking for his evening companionship, so he quickly downs the rest of his glass, and when he’s sets his glass down there’s someone sitting across from him.

“Shuttle guy! McCoy, right?”

Leonard nods. He recognizes the kid, but he doesn’t remember his name so he doesn’t say anything. His visitor doesn’t seem to mind.

“You’re looking better than last time I saw you.”

“I’m sober,” Leonard replies. “Don’t get too used to it, I’m trying to remedy that.” He gestures for another drink and he sees the kid mouthing _beer_ to the pretty waitress out of the corner of his eye.

They sit and watch the bar fill up in mostly silence, occasionally peppered with the kid’s pithy comments (“Holy shit, would you look at those legs? Can you imagine the _vice grip_ on your ears?”) and witty asides (“This beer could stand to be beer-ier.”) The former earns him dirty looks, the latter bewildered ones, but Leonard will grudgingly admit that it’s a welcome distraction from himself. Not unlike their shuttle ride, now that he thinks about it.

Eventually the comments grow fewer and farther between, each of them sizing up each new patron as they come through the door. Leonard is startled when the kid speaks again, but he covers his flinch with a scowl.

“What d’you think about her?” he asks, pointing discreetly to a particularly stunning brunette in a truly tiny dress sitting at the bar.

Leonard lets out a low whistle.

“What about you, man. Who’ve you got your eye on?”

Leonard studies him for a moment, considering, before he shrugs and tilts his head in the direction of a tall dark haired man in a pair of jeans so tight Leonard practically feels it his duty to get them off before they do irreparable harm.

His drinking buddy – whose name he still can’t remember, thanks to being drunk when they met, no doubt – nods appreciatively, his eyes lingering on the tight denim and the clearly delineated anatomy therein, and takes a long pull at his beer. He licks at his lips and Leonard finds his eyes following the tongue until it disappears back into his mouth.

A flash of long blond hair pulls his eyes away from this kid’s mouth and he tenses. The woman that just walked in looks a fair bit like Jocelyn. Not enough to mistake them, even from across the crowded room, but enough to make him work a little harder to recover some of his lost buzz.

He glances over at the kid and sees him passing an appreciative eye over the blonde. Leonard gives a mental shrug. If the kid wants her, he’s on his own. Leonard made the mistake already of assuming Jocelyn had been “his type” and picked up a woman with similar attributes.

He’d discovered that it didn’t really do it for him anymore; what he’d loved about Jocelyn had been _Jocelyn_. Until she turned into a raving bitch, and then not so much. Now he missed the idea of her from time to time but God help him, that woman could go straight to hell.

Apparently Jocelyn had missed the “do not pass go, do not collect all of my money” bit on that chance card and she’d cleaned him out on the way.

Leonard goes back to staring appreciatively at the man in the painted-on jeans. Forget Jocelyn. He was in a bar, surrounded by beautiful people, decent drinking companion at his side. He glances over at said drinking companion and finds him eyeing him appraisingly.

“Something on my face?” he asks dryly.

The kid smiles. “Nope.”

“Huh.” And that’s it. The kid doesn’t look away, Leonard doesn’t ask what he wants. He _knows_ what he wants. And to be honest, Leonard’s feeling pretty willing. The guy’s damn pretty and probably knows his way around a blowjob, if the way he keeps licking his lips and glancing at Leonard’s belt is any indication.

After sitting through another moment of consideration, which is far less awkward than Leonard feels it should be, he turns back to his companion. “We gonna have to sit here through another drink?”

The smile on his face grows into a grin. “Fuck no. I’m just really hoping your roommate’s not around tonight.”

“No roommate. Let’s go.” McCoy makes his way to the bar without looking behind him, he knows he doesn’t have to. Tabs settled they exit the bar together, into the stifling warmth of the September night.

Southern gentleman to the last, McCoy holds the door and gestures the other man through. “Would now be a bad time to mention I can’t remember your name?”

Well, almost to the last.

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

Leonard lets them both into his apartment. In another life he might have found taking someone back to this stark, tiny room embarrassing, but now he can’t bring himself to care. That might have something to do with the fact that he’s certain Jim – as he’s been reminded kid is named – has got to deal with so much worse.

He closes the door behind them and when he turns back to Jim, he’s already got his shirt off. His hands move to the hem of Leonard’s and he gives a sharp tug. With another tug and a well practiced wiggle the shirt is up and over his head, leaving his hair in who knows what state.

Leonard’s hand goes to Jim’s side and he pulls him close, presses them together. Their skin is hotter than the night air and already sweat is starting to break out between them. Leonard smiles at the thought of slippery sex and kisses Jim.

God, when he thought the kid had a great mouth he wasn’t wrong. He may have grossly underestimated, but he wasn’t wrong.

Jim kisses back with an intensity that has Leonard hard, tenting the front of his jeans almost painfully. He pulls back with a soft groan and pushes Jim in the direction of his bed. He’d forgotten in the bar how small it really was. They would make do.

Jim reaches the bed first, sitting on the edge, and he stops Leonard when he moves to join him. With Leonard standing between his knees, Jim carefully opens his fly and tugs the jeans down low enough to relieve the pressure that’s been building since they walked through the door.

Leonard lets out a soft sound of relief which abruptly changes pitch as Jim’s hand snakes into the elastic of his underwear and cups him firmly in his warm hand. He can’t help it, he thrusts gently into the hand and his eyes slide shut, just for a second.

Jim pulls the waistband of his underwear down until it rests just under his balls, his erection thrown into stark relief as it bobs gently against his stomach.

“Jesus, you’ve got a nice cock.” Jim doesn’t look at him as he says it, doesn’t touch him, but Leonard finds himself thrusting gently into nothing all the same, incredibly turned on. If Jim doesn’t touch him soon…

But then he does. He takes his shaft in one hand and gently holds his balls in the other as he licks his lips to wet them. It’s the same gesture Leonard watched repeatedly as they sat across from each other in the bar, but here Jim’s staring straight at the head of Leonard’s dick when he does it and Leonard finds himself letting out a soft “uh.”

Jim doesn’t say anything, just lowers his head and licks carefully around the head before moving forward and taking as much as he can in his mouth. Leonard’s head falls back as his neck suddenly forgets to hold it up.

The hand on his balls disappears, only to reappear behind him as Jim places it on his ass and uses it to pull him closer. Jesus Christ in the morning. Jim’s mouth is hot and wet and glorious as he hollows his cheeks, pumping steadily with the hand wrapped around the base of Leonard’s cock.

Leonard rocks slightly in time to Jim’s rhythm but carefully doesn’t thrust. He doesn’t need to, Jim’s tongue is doing criminal things to the underside of his dick and his cheeks hollow again as he gives another long suck.

“Jim,” Leonard groans. He tries for more articulate this time. “Jim, I’m going to…” Jim sucks him deeper before backing off again, increasing the pace of his hand and his tongue and Leonard stops talking immediately.

When he comes into Jim’s mouth, Jim doesn’t even pause, just slides up and down Leonard’s dick, swallowing convulsively around him.

When Leonard comes back down he is bent over Jim, on hand supporting himself on Jim’s shoulder, the other hanging limply at his side. Jim is still working his softening dick in his mouth, looking straight at his face and _fuck,_ if he hadn’t just come that sight would be enough to make him hard as a rock.

He flops onto the bed beside Jim, wiping his hair from where it’s stuck to his damp forehead with one hand. Jim lies back and rolls onto his side, taking in Leonard’s panting, sweaty form.

With one hand, Leonard draws him down to nip gently at his lips. Jim’s not having any of that and his tongue sweeps firmly into Leonard’s mouth. His kisses are urgent and frantic and when Leonard fucks his tongue back in to Jim’s mouth, Jim moans long and low, rocking against Leonard’s hip.

They’re somehow still both wearing their pants and shoes. Leonard quickly kicks his off while his hands go to Jim’s fly, one hand abandoning its post to help with Leonard’s more stubborn socks before returning to the Jim’s button.

Jim mouth is working a steady line across his jaw and down his neck. It’s making his job more difficult but it’s also making it considerably more pleasant so he just tips his head to the side and arches into the feel of Jim’s hot tongue.

“Can I fuck you?” He feels Jim’s question as well as he hears it, in the hot breath against his neck, and he grunts his affirmation. _Can_ he? God, Leonard doesn’t even want to think about what will happen if he _doesn’t_.

“Nightstand,” he mutters urgently, suddenly incredibly glad he thought to unpack everything the day before.

Jim leans past him and reaches into the drawer as Leonard gets the zipper down and begins to pull the jeans down over Jim’s hips. He gets distracted as his hand slides into Jim’s boxer-briefs and he gets a handful of truly exceptional ass. He runs his palm over Jim’s warm skin and gives it a brief squeeze that causes Jim to buck into his stomach.

Jim pulls back, taking a few seconds to shuck his pants and socks before settling himself between Leonard’s legs. Leonard spreads them farther, bending his knees and he can see Jim’s breathing become shallower.

With the fingers of his right hand slicked up with lube Jim puts his left under Leonard’s knee and presses his leg up closer to his chest. He works his fingers into Leonard one by one, alternately thrusting into him and stretching gently until he is satisfied that he’s ready.

By the time he pulls his fingers back Leonard is panting and sweaty. At the feel of Jim pressing into him, opening him up and sliding in, Leonard moans. He can’t get any leverage with Jim pressing his leg up, tilting his hips off the bed but he clenches around Jim and rocks gently against him.

Jim’s eyes slam shut and his hips stutter to a stop before he takes a deep breath and presses forward, seating himself more deeply inside Leonard. With quick, sharp thrusts he fucks his way into him, before setting a longer, steadier rhythm.

Soon he is gripping both of Leonard’s thighs as he holds them up, out of the way and fucking into him steadily. Leonard lets out a soft grunt as each thrust drives into him, driving him in turn into the mattress.

Jim’s hand slips slightly on the slick sweat of Leonard’s leg and he readjusts his grip, pounding into him harder. Jim’s chest is heaving and the sweat is dripping down his spine, down his temples, his neck.

Leonard watches as Jim’s shoulders stiffen, his head bowing to the side as he gives one hard thrust, then another, and another before his arms bend beneath him and his head presses into Leonard’s shoulder, breathing heavily. He pulls out and rolls to the side, not that there’s anywhere to roll.

They lie together, the sound of harsh panting between them for Leonard doesn’t even know how long before Jim sits up. “Mind if I use your shower before I go?”

“Help yourself,” Leonard replies. “I’d join you but my legs aren’t working too well right now. I think I’ll just lie here for a bit.”

Jim grins and flings himself over Leonard on his way to the shower.

“Towels are out here in the cupboard!” he calls to the closed door but he gets no response. Kid’s probably going to drip all over his floor. He should probably get up and just bring him a towel.

In a minute.

He’s just going to close his eyes for a second.

~

Jim is gone when Leonard wakes up and he’s a little bit relieved. He’s already regretting sleeping with somebody he’s probably going to have to see around campus from time to time. It kind of makes the whole one-night-stand thing awkward if you actually have to interact with the person afterward.

He showers, eager to get clean after spending the night in the wet spot. He takes longer than he can really afford to but he really should have just showered last night.

He tosses his sheets in the laundry as well, no way is he sleeping on that again tonight.

Pulling out a set of cadet reds and finding a pair of shoes that nobody has thrown up on, he puts them on, finds the PADD he will need for today’s classes and heads out the door. He slips into Introduction to Xenosociology with seconds to spare and quietly finds a seat.

Whoever scheduled his first class at 8:15 in the morning was either a sadist or a moron and quite possibly both. He didn’t even have time to grab coffee this morning. He just lays his forehead against his desk and closes his eyes until he hears the professor address the class.

That’s his excuse for not noticing that he had sat down right in front of Jim until twenty minutes into the class.

Sometime between the professor droning on about how Humans are just as alien to Vulcans as Vulcans are to Humans, and him explaining that Andorian social mores differ from that of Humans in terms his six-year-old would have no trouble understanding, Leonard’s attention begins to waver. He does a double take when he turns around and sees Jim sitting two seats behind him.

His surprise must have shown on his face because Jim winks at him and then goes back to whispering something into the ear of the pretty cadet on his left.

Goddamn it. The chances of Leonard not having a single class with Jim were low, but he’d still been hoping that maybe they wouldn’t be seeing each other around. Why had he thought it was a good idea to go to bed with another cadet?

The class drags by and Leonard learns nothing that wasn’t covered in his third grade social studies class. Judging by the furious rate at which the cadet next to him has been taking notes, however, not everyone is as bored as he is. That or maybe they’re busy working on the ground breaking novel that will turn the world of fiction on its ear. He could go either way.

A few subtle (he hopes) glances backward tell him that Jim hasn’t been paying any more attention than he has. Apparently done flirting for now, Jim is scribbling on his PADD. Literally scribbling, if the broad, sweeping stroke with his stylus are any indication.

Jim cradles his chin in his palm and lets his shoulders slump, not even bothering to hide his disinterest in the lecture, and Leonard turns back to the front of the room smiling.

When they are finally dismissed Leonard stands up in a rush, not even caring he’ll have to fight his way through the crowd to the door. He doesn’t want to be here a minute longer. God help him if he has to put up with three years of _this_.

Waiting impatiently at the bottleneck by the door, Leonard is surprised to feel a hand on his shoulder.

“Hey, Bones.”

Leonard turns and looks at Jim. “Did you just call me _bones_?”

“I did.” Jim grins unabashedly at him, like he simply doesn’t realize that this should be slightly uncomfortable. Strangely, it puts Leonard at ease.

“Is this about that stupid thing I said on the shuttle? Oh, no. Oh God, don’t tell me this is because…” Leonard’s face goes from bewildered to just shy of thunderous in a second. If the brat thinks he’s going to give him a sexy nickname…

Jim’s grin just grows broader.

“Dammit, kid!”

“Jim,” he corrects. “And if you tell me you’ve forgotten my name again I’m going to be a little offended this time.”

That kind of deflates Leonard’s righteous indignation. He just frowns at Jim and turns back toward the door.

Leonard doesn’t have another class until after lunch but Jim has to head off to be lectured about warp mechanics. He feels that sense of relief again as he watches Jim walk away, but whether it’s relief at Jim’s departure, or relief at Jim’s unreserved friendliness he’s not sure. He’d been expecting… he’s not sure what he’d been expecting.

And frankly, he skipped breakfast and he’s too hungry to dwell on it.

~

Lunch is a quick, noisy affair in the mess. He gets there early enough that he’s not stuck waiting in a long line, but the line quickly fills out behind him and the chatter of cadets, both new and returning, is so loud Leonard can hardly hear himself think.

The food is decent, but nothing great and for a moment he misses home. He misses barbeque, he misses cornbread, and he misses tea that isn’t green. For fuck’s sake, it’s not the dark ages, would it kill them to have some real food?

The doctor in him pipes up that a turkey sandwich _is_ real food, and better for him besides, but he quickly squashes that thought. He’d never admit it out loud but sometimes the doctor in him is a self-righteous jackass.

After lunch is Basic Andorii, his language class of choice for his first term. He has no real interest in ever holding a conversation in it, but it beat Klingonese by a mile.

The afternoon drags just as much as the morning. His class is more challenging sure, but he’s still sitting in a room full of cadets he could have babysat in high school, learning to say “this is a big tree” in Andorii. Which doesn’t even touch on the fact that there _are_ no big trees on Andoria.

_Leonard McCoy, this is your life._

He manages to restrain himself from face-planting onto his desk, but only just. By the time he finally gets out of class again he’s already decided he’s going to drop out and possibly join the circus. It’s better than this.

One of the greatest things about _being_ a doctor was that you were done with school. Medical school was a harsh experience, and his internship was worse. By the time he was done he was certain he was never doing it again.

Apparently, he was wrong.

He wants to head straight back to his room and collapse on his bed but he already skipped one meal today, it wouldn’t do to skip another. So whether out of laziness or sheer apathy, Leonard finds himself in the mess again that evening.

When he sees Jim sitting at a table in the back he hesitates on his way to the seat he’d picked out, and before he knows what he’s done he’s sitting across from him.

Jim glances up as he slides into his chair and gives him a genuine smile. “Hey, man. Is your dinner as gross as mine is?”

“I don’t know yet, I haven’t tasted it.” Leonard pokes gingerly at his chicken before shrugging and popping a bite into his mouth.

He chews slowly, as if he’s afraid one wrong move will cause his dinner to explode. The frown slips off his face by degrees. It’s actually… not bad.

He tells Jim as much and Jim just sighs and pokes at his… some kind of grey meat. “If I have to go without beef the whole time I’m here, I’m going to go insane.”

“It’s grey. That was probably your first clue to find something else,” Leonard offers.

Jim’s mouth quirks downward. “It’s kinda hard, too.”

“Hard?” he asks, one eyebrow high on his face.

Jim picks it up with his fork and lets it fall back to his plate. It makes a sound no steak should ever make. If it is indeed steak. Jim’s face tells Leonard he’s not so sure.

“Huh,” Leonard says flatly.

“I could be wrong, but I’m pretty sure my dinner should not _clunk,_ ” says Jim.

“You’re not wrong.” McCoy reaches out with his own fork and pokes at Jim’s dinner. Rude, yes, but he’s pretty sure Jim wasn’t planning on eating it. It’s stiff, but the tines of his fork disappear into it with relative ease. “Huh,” he repeats.

“Donate it to science,” Leonard suggests and Jim pushes the whole tray away from him, crossing his arms, elbows on the table and gives Leonard his undivided attention.

Their conversation is light, easy and Leonard finds himself relaxing again in Jim’s presence. There’s nothing sexual about the way Jim is looking at him, nothing suggestive in what he’s saying. There are no expectations for anything more than the one night they already shared.

Leonard digs into his own meal, which is actually pretty good. But then, chicken is easier to replicate than beef so he’s not surprised. It’s actually why he’d made this particular selection.

Jim sits and talks to him as he eats, picking at his own plate as they chat even though Leonard is certain it tastes as bad as it looks. Leonard appreciates it, though he’s relatively sure Jim is doing it as much for his own benefit as he is for Leonard’s.

It sucks to find yourself alone in a new place, no matter how much you wanted to get away from the old place, so McCoy smiles at the appropriate places and adds his own two cents when Jim pauses for breath. Pretty soon he doesn’t have to remind himself not to scowl, the smiles come naturally to his lips and he finds himself laughing along with Jim.

It’s _fun._ Not in the way finding a stranger in a bar is fun, not like sex is fun, but _real_ fun. For fifteen minutes, Leonard is happy.

When he bids Jim good night and heads back to his room he’s still smiling. And he completely forgets to look for career opportunities as a unicycle-riding juggler. He just settles in at his desk and pulls up the medical journals he’s been neglecting since his life went to shit. There are a lot of them.

It’s not even until he’s putting clean sheets on his bed and climbing under the covers that he realizes he forgot to open the new bottle of bourbon he picked up while he was out yesterday.

~

Leonard doesn’t have any classes the next day, but he does have a shift at the hospital. He nods hello to Chapel and Rodriguez and grabs the PADD to check and see who he’s got today.

“Good morning, Dr. McCoy,” Rodriguez chirps and he can hear Chapel explaining the importance of making sure patients arrive to the ward they’re intended for to a nearby orderly using small, simple words.

“Morning, Rodriguez,” he replies. “Did you ladies have fun last night?” He’s not sure he really cares or for that matter, why he remembers she’d had a girl’s night planned when he’d only been half listening to her tell him about it in the first place. But Rodriguez is sweet, if chatty, and it doesn’t hurt to make nice with people you have to see everyday. Provided they’re not complete morons.

Unfortunately, that rules out an alarming number of the people he has to see everyday.

He nods along with the blow by blow of holos watched and beverages consumed before making his way down the hall to check on Noelle Pacini, a cadet recovering from an appendectomy she’d had earlier that morning.

Nevermind that Leonard is an accomplished surgeon, a more than adequate psychologist, a damn good physician and a fantastic scientist besides. Apparently his talents are best utilized by checking to make sure patients recovering from routine surgery have enough pudding cups and don’t need their pillows fluffed.

Because this is what he went to a ridiculously expensive medical school for.

Cadet Pacini is fine in the pudding cup department, as it turns out. She’s also fine in the pain medication department. She’ll be able to leave later this afternoon and while that doesn’t make up for missing the first day of the semester due to acute abdominal pain, she seems relieved at the news.

McCoy gives her a smile, it’s not her fault his boss is a prick, and heads back to the nurses’ station.

“Doctor McCoy,” Chapel greets. “How was your first day of classes?”

Chapel is younger than Leonard, closer to Jim’s age if he had to guess, but this is her third year at the academy and she’s been invaluable in answering any questions Leonard might have regarding the hospital. She is intelligent and competent, so she meets Leonard’s minimum requirement for people he can tolerate with any degree of civility. She has a sense of humor and an appreciation for the ridiculous that Leonard appreciates and she’s got the brains to know that it’s always best to keep interaction with Lemley to a minimum, so she gets bonus points for that.

Right now he can’t help but feel that the humor she’s finding in this situation at his expense. His only answer to her question is a rather dark look and she laughs.

“Did you get the introductory lecture in Xenosociology?” she asks.

He rolls his eyes. “If by introductory you mean ‘intended for people who have never heard the word xenosociology before,’ then yes.”

She smiles at him in a way that makes him sure that’s exactly what she meant. “And after that? Have you had your survival training class yet?”

Leonard takes a deep breath and lets it out. “Not yet, no.” And it’s not one he’s looking forward to. Technically one of his three combat classes, Basic Survival Training isn’t just about learning to fight, it covers all manner of sadistic feats of strength and endurance that no doctor should ever have to think about outside of treating the survivors.

“That’s a good one,” Chapel says with a wicked grin. What Leonard hears is something more like ‘You’re going to embarrass yourself in more ways than you can count and I’m delighting in your misery.’

He scowls at her.

“I’m sure you’ll do fine, the field practicals don’t start until October anyway,” she says, like that’s any kind of comfort at all, and claps him on the shoulder before leaving him at the desk to check on the cadet who’d been admitted for accidently stabbing himself in the hand with a stylus.

Ladies and gentlemen, the future diplomats and military leaders of the Federation.

He checks over the recent admission, seeing they’ve all been assigned to two or three doctors who have been working at the hospital for years. He’s got nothing to do up here. He’s in a hospital full of the sick and injured and he’s got nothing to do. Lemley is either completely incompetent as an administrator, or he is _actually_ evil.

Fuck this. He’s going down to the ER. If they need him Chapel will figure it out, he thinks, heading for the stairs.

He’s been in the ER all of thirty seconds when someone hands him a PADD and pushes a patient at him. This is more like it.

The patient is the husband of one of the instructors and he’s managed to crush his hand while attempting a home improvement project on his own. “Follow me,” Leonard says, and walks toward the nearest empty room. He assumes the man with the giant purple hand is following.

When he finally glances back at the clock it’s been four hours and he’s missed his usual lunch break. He hands his last PADD back to the triage nurse and heads back upstairs, God willing Lemley hasn’t even noticed he’s missing.

He hasn’t. Leonard swears, the man never leaves his office. He might actually be an extension of his cushy office chair. How he thinks he can manage any part of a hospital he never actually sees Leonard doesn’t know but he hasn’t actually seen the man standing up yet.

Leonard spares a moment to think that maybe he’s just incredibly short. Maybe he’s really a legless puppet, attached to his chair with someone’s hand up his…

Nevermind. Leonard would like to actually be able to eat.

The hospital cafeteria isn’t really any better than the mess. In fact, he’s pretty sure it’s actually exactly the same food, replicated or prepared somewhere and carted off to various locations around the base.

And then left to congeal in warming trays.

 _Note to self,_ he thinks. _Eat at actual meal times._

He makes sure to steer clear of the beef. After last night nothing could convince him to try it. Besides, it’s _definitely_ grey. Why Jim could see that and still think it would be a good idea to eat it is a mystery but somehow the whole thing had been gone by the time they’d left the table.

He eats his lunch alone and heads back to the nursing station on his floor. Chapel just gives him a smile and nods at the door, a clear sign for him to go back to the ER. He gives her a grateful smile in return and head back to the first floor, confident that Chapel has his back.

If that woman ever ends up working for him he’s giving her a giant bonus.

~

Wednesday brings with it the first of his combat classes. Leonard sits for an hour and learns about the different parts of the phaser. An hour of “this is the trigger, don’t pull it unless you want to shoot something,” and “this is the muzzle, don’t point it anyone unless you want to shoot them,” ad nauseum.

About forty minutes in, the instructor throws in a “this is the power pack, without it your phaser won’t shoot,” just to break up the monotony. Leonard’s not sure if sitting on his ass, bored out of his mind is better or worse than he’d expected for this class. He should probably be thankful for the time he gets to spend relaxing in the climate controlled room.

Then again, tomorrow is hand to hand.

This is his only class today, but he has another shift at the hospital this afternoon. He’s hoping to get down to the ER again. It’s grossly unorganized there but the doctors are good people, if overworked. If the assholes upstairs would just assign a few of the doctors they’ve got sitting on their thumbs (Leonard included) to doing something like, oh, seeing patients, things would run a whole lot smoother.

Chapel has his back again, as it turns out, and he spends the afternoon treating injuries varying from a bruised shoulder to an honest to God severed finger. Cooking accident, or so the kid claims. Unless he was cooking with a laser saw, Leonard sincerely doubts that.

The rest of his week passes in much the same way. It’s not all severed digits but Leonard finds himself ranging all over the hospital seeing patients and consulting with other doctors on every floor.

Before he leaves Wednesday he treats four cases of food poisoning. On Thursday he consults on two difficult cases with the infectious disease specialist and treats a man who is vomiting blood – he keeps his shoes out of the way this time. Friday brings a slew of cadets who, living in close quarters and probably not practicing the best of hygiene, have managed to pass a virus around the dorms.

He spends a good portion of his time insulting the intelligence, pedigree and bathing habits of the members of Starfleet, the residents of San Francisco, of California in general, and on one occasion, the universe at large. He is in truly his element.

The one notable exception to this is his hand to hand class. It is every bit as worthless, pointless and embarrassing as he thought it would be. He hates it, simple as that. The first six or so times he landed on his ass he’d silently seethed to himself about the futility of it all but by the time he hit fifteen or so he’d settled into a comfortable apathy.

By the time Saturday comes around he’s just glad to have some time to himself. Which is why he’s less than pleased when he hears someone at his door at 9:30 Saturday morning. He opens it anyway.

“Jim?” he is surprised to find the other man outside his door. Though he’s not sure who he was expecting instead, now that he thinks about it.

“Hey, Bones. Do you have clothes?”

Leonard glances down at his t-shirt and sweats, and back at Jim.

“Because I don’t,” Jim continues. Either oblivious or ignoring Leonard’s wry look. He gestures down at his own jeans and ratty t-shirt. “I literally have this and what I was wearing on the shuttle as far as _normal_ clothes go, and that will not do.”

“And that brought you here because?” Leonard asks, baffled.

“I have to go shopping and misery loves company,” Jim offers almost hopefully.

Leonard’s eyebrow twitches. “And I repeat…”

“I thought your misery was lonely? C’mon, Bones. I’ll buy you lunch.” Jim smiles winningly at him, like that will help his cause.

“Will you stop calling me Bones?”

“No, but you can order a milkshake.”

Leonard rolls his eyes but finds himself stepping back to let Jim in almost despite himself. “Wait on the couch. Don’t touch anything.”

Jim just smiles at him, neither mentions this isn’t exactly the first time he’s been in Leonard’s apartment.

It doesn’t feel the same as it did last time he was here. For one thing, they’re not tearing each other’s clothes off. But there’s more to it than that. Jim is still the same Jim he was then, still just as attractive, just as interesting, intelligent and charming (ha!) and the sex certainly wasn’t bad. It’s just that that not what either one of them really needs.

Sex they can get from somewhere else, but Leonard has a feeling Jim really does just need someone he can go out shopping with without having to worry about how he was going to close the deal. And Leonard needs someone who has no expectations of him. Right now, that’s Jim.

Right now, all Jim wants him to do is keep him company and drink a damn milkshake. He can do that. Provided it isn’t strawberry.

He leaves him on the couch and goes into the bathroom to change into clothes he doesn’t mind being seen in out in public, because unlike the man waiting in his living room, Leonard had at least taken the time to pack a bag.

He wonders if Jim has a toothbrush.

When he comes out Jim is still on the couch. For some reason this surprises him. “Alright,” he says, heading out the door. “Let’s go.”

Leonard’s visions of standing around while Jim takes hours mulling over style choices and color options prove to be entirely unfounded. Jim makes a beeline for the t-shirts when they enter the store, grabs four or five of them and heads off for the jeans. Ten minutes later he is standing in front of Leonard with an impressive heap of clothing in his arms.

“You going to get anything?” Jim asks. “Because now would be the time.”

Leonard doesn’t answer the question. “You gonna try that on?” he asks, eyeing Jim’s pile.

Jim glances down at the clothing in his arms. “It’ll fit.”

Leonard lifts an eloquent brow and Jim rolls his eyes. “Would that make you happy? Fine, I’ll try it on.”

Jim disappears into the fitting rooms while Leonard pokes around. He has clothes, but the truth is that the clothing befitting a successful Georgian doctor is a far cry from those he could be wearing as a cadet in his off time. There is no way he’s wearing button-downs and khakis every weekend until graduation and he happens to be wearing his only pair of jeans.

When he arrives in the fitting room he find Jim in front of a mirror, turning this way and that and cupping and adjusting himself in a pair of jeans so tight Leonard wonders how Jim’s feet aren’t turning purple.

“Oh, for the love of God,” he says. “Take those off.”

Jim gives him a look that very clearly says “Oh, really?” and Leonard’s eyes narrow.

“Just trust me, kid, you keep wearing your pants that tight and pretty soon it won’t matter if you can convince them to take you home, you’re not gonna be any good to them once you get there.”

The smug look on Jim’s face flickers for a second and then returns, more smug than ever. “That assumes I’m only good for my dick,” he says, but slips back into the changing room anyway, presumably to change back into his own clothes.

“Did I mention the painful nerve damage?” Leonard calls over the stall door before stepping into his own cubicle.

“Must have slipped your mind.” Jim’s voice comes from right behind his left ear and he jumps.

“Jesus Christ, Jim! They have individual stalls for a reason. What the hell are you doing?”

“What do you think about these?” Jim asks in way of an answer. He’s wearing a new pair pants, this one slightly looser, but still rather... flattering.

“I think you just bought yourself about five years of erectile function. Now get out.” McCoy says, shoving Jim toward the door.

After that it’s only a matter of paying for their purchases, something done to the soundtrack of Leonard grumbling about magnets not being a proper substitute for real locks in a place where one should be able to expect some modicum of privacy, and they are on their way.

Lunch is a casual affair, a diner a few miles from the campus and Leonard opts for coffee in favor of a milkshake after all. Jim just smiles and orders a cup for himself and they sit in the booth and chat about absolutely nothing.

From there it turns into spending the day with Jim. Neither has anywhere else to be. Sure, they both have homework to do but the best time to do homework is always later.

By the time they part ways just before dinner, each going to stow their purchases in their rooms, Leonard has stopped complaining about anything and everything and started smiling when Jim makes a joke.

“Alright man,” Jim says, clapping him on the shoulder. “Thanks for caring about my dick. I’ll see you around.”

On another day the titters of a nearby group of cadets might have pissed him off. Today he can only laugh and shake his head. The man is insane.

The lack of the thundercloud over his head earns him a double take from the campus security stationed by his building but so what? He’s allowed to be in a good mood for a day. God knows it’s not going to last. They’re going to start using the simulator in Basic Flight next week.

Fuck. He’d actually managed to forget for a few hours.

He doesn’t smile again for the rest of the night.

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

Flight sims are horrible. Leonard is not surprised.

The shaking and vomiting aside, they’re going into this assuming everyone can at least pilot a hovercar decently. Leonard can’t. And he doesn’t really care to practice, thank you very much.

Oh sure, he knows the theory. He took his test as a teenager, just like everyone else. The difference being that once he got his license (barely) he never bothered getting in one again. He prefers things that _can’t_ fall out of the sky. Even if calling three feet of air “sky” is debatable. The point was that if it doesn’t have wheels or feet or hell, hooves, Leonard wants no part.

By the time they’re pairing up as “pilots” and “co-pilots” Leonard has broken into a cold sweat. The word _sim_ is deceptive. It brings to mind a safe computer terminal in some classroom where the students could line up and take turns pretending. What it does not bring to mind is actually filing into shuttles–the older models, the kind they don’t use anymore which does nothing to inspire feelings of the warm and fuzzy sort–and actually taking off so you can experience the effects of leaving atmo and reentry “realistically.”

Fuck “realistically.” He wanted the kind of sim you bought your nephew for Christmas. The kind you didn’t need to leave the comfort of your own living room for. The kind that only ended in fiery death in the figurative sense.

Knowing little to nothing about the cadets’ various strengths and weaknesses, the instructors have allowed the cadets to pair up by themselves. In each team one person would take a turn as pilot and then switch with their partner, acting as their co-pilot. Leonard is not at all surprised and too busy quietly freaking out to be embarrassed by the wary looks he’s getting from the other cadets. It doesn’t matter that they won’t have actually control of the shuttle. It will be leaving the ground and that’s enough to get his heart beating a little too fast.

Not too busy to be mildly startled when he finds Jim at his side, staring him straight in the eye with a look that clearly said they’d be going up together. Well, this could certainly be worse.

To be honest, he doesn’t remember much of the flight itself but Jim is smiling and has a hand on his shoulder when they’re back on the ground so he assumes they did okay. They get no real praise from the instructors but neither do they get the correction he sees them giving some of the other cadets, so it’s really the best that could have been hoped for.

He’s a little out of it for the rest of the night. He answers another message from his mother who apparently has forgotten this is hardly the first time he’s left Georgia for school. She means well and she hasn’t sent him muffins at least.

~

The weeks go on and Jim sticks around. It almost seems like every time Leonard turns around, Jim is there, whether Leonard wants him to be or not. And as time goes on Leonard finds more and more that he does want him there.

They have classes together, they eat together, they go drinking together, though they generally part ways when one or both of them finds other company for the evening. Leonard finds himself straying more toward men these days, whether because he went without for so many years with Jocelyn or precisely because they’re unlike Jocelyn, he doesn’t know. At any rate, it doesn’t stop him from going home with the two lovely (and busty) brunettes from Jim’s stellar cartography class when they offer.

Even on nights when both strike out – and it does happen from time to time – they make their way back to the Academy together, clap each other on the shoulder, or comparable body part depending on how good their hand-eye coordination is after a night of drinking, and head off to their separate rooms.

Somehow they have fallen into a routine. More to the point, somehow they have fallen into a friendship.

Slowly but surely, Georgia is becoming a memory; a part of his life that’s over now, replaced with something new. The thought is strangely sobering. This is not how his life was supposed to go. And maybe it’s the alcohol but for the life him, he can’t remember why not.

~

While his classes continue to be a pain in the ass, his work at the hospital is getting better. Dr. Kaya’s still a pompous prick and Dr. Lemley has yet to be sighted out of his cushy office chair but his respect for his many of his colleagues has grown into admiration and in some cases, genuine affection.

His cheerful “hello” for Rodriguez surprises even him this morning. It earns him twenty-five minutes of having his ear talked of but he welcomes it, even if he does learn more about certain Betazed sexual practices than is strictly necessary, medically speaking.

“Dr. McCoy,” Nurse Chapel greets, sliding behind her desk.

“Morning, Christine.” He has a smile for her, too.

“Oh-ho,” she says with a wicked grin. “Did somebody have a good weekend?”

“A gentleman never kisses and tells.”

“And that is why I never ask Piotr about his weekend.”

“Touché,” he answers with a quirk of an eyebrow before taking the necessary PADD from the desk and waving farewell. He is needed in the ER this morning.

And by needed, he means that he’s scheduled to be sitting around sipping coffee again and the hospital admin can go fuck themselves.

When Leonard’s shift ends, Jim is waiting for him at the nurses’ station, chatting amiably with Rodriguez about her date last night. Leonard can overhear them discussing the finer details of “the phase” and can’t help but roll his eyes at Jim’s rapt expression. Leonard, however, has already heard the details – twice – so he simply smiles at Rodriguez and grabs Jim by the elbow and pulls him away from the desk.

“What do you want?” he asks as they head out the door together, Jim still dragging behind him.

“Why do you assume I’m here for you? You work in a hospital _full_ of people.”

Leonard just looks at him.

Jim shrugs. “Nothing really. Just bored.”

“So study.” Jim has homework to do, Leonard knows he does because not even Jim Kirk can do his assignments without his PADD, and it just so happens that Jim’s is sitting on the side table by Leonard’s couch.

“I’ll do it later.” Jim replies dismissively.

Leonard just hums in agreement, causing Jim’s eyes narrow in suspicion.

Leonard scowls back. “Don’t give me that look, you ingrate. You left it at the bar on Friday. Though, what kind of moron brings his homework to a bar with him…” he rails, with a pointed look in Jim’s direction.

Jim doesn’t rise to the bait, just twitches in a manner that’s too lazy to be called a shrug, but can’t really be called anything else either. “I didn’t want to stop by my room before we left. Gregory had _friends_ over.”

Jim says “friends” in such a way he may as well just have called them all barn animals. Which is probably not far off the mark. Jim’s roommate, Gregory, is a giant of a man that can’t quite grasp the concept that the room he shares with Jim is not a frat house. He and his buddies, who had clearly joined Starfleet for the opportunity to be paid to shoot things, often “hang-out” in Jim’s room, making the space loud, messy, crowded and just generally unlivable.

Leonard could hardly fault Jim for his avoiding them, even at the cost of a PADD.

“Well come on,” Leonard says with a tilt of his head as he starts off in the direction of the medical staff housing.

He lets them both in to the dark room, letting the door close behind him before ordering the lights on. Jim has already made his way over to the couch, neatly avoiding the coffee table. Either he’s become familiar enough with the layout of the room to move around it in the dark, or he’s part cat.

Jim grabs his PADD off the table, making himself right at home sprawled on Leonard’s couch and begins to tap at the screen.

Leonard gives Jim a wry look, which he completely fails to notice. “Need anything? Your pillows fluffed perhaps?” he asks mordantly.

“I’m good,” Jim replies without looking up from his PADD.

“Then scoot the fuck over and let me sit on my own damn couch.” Leonard doesn’t wait for compliance, just shoves Jim’s legs over the edge of the couch. They hit the floor with a thump and Leonard flops down in the space they’ve just vacated.

Jim promptly lifts his legs back up and into Leonard’s lap.

“Dammit, Jim. I’m not a footstool!” And Jim’s feet go right back on the floor. “You’ve got your PADD; here’s an idea: why don’t you go sprawl out in your own goddamn room and let me get some work done?”

“Because my room is full of muscle-bound assholes that think my bed is an acceptable place to sit and scratch themselves, so you’re going to let me camp out here. Because that’s what friends are for.” Jim delivers this entire speech without looking up from his PADD and Leonard gets the idea that part of him is actually worried he’ll kick him out. He takes pity on him. Sort of.

“Oh, so we’re friends now?” Bones teases, a small smile touching his lips.

Jim’s answering smile is wide and genuine. “Well, I like to think we’ve at least become better strangers.”

Leonard grunts and reaches past Jim for his own PADD. Half way through reading the first sentence his head snaps back up and he turns to Jim, mouth open.

“Did you just quote _Shakespeare_ at me?” he asks, disbelievingly.

“I _read_!” Jim defends, but his eyes are still crinkling in amusement.

“Un-fucking-believable.” Leonard goes back to his reading, smile still on his lips, and the silence that settles over them is more comfortable then he can remember being in a while.

He speeds through his reading and by the time they quit for dinner he’s made enough progress to call it a night. They order in, watch something Jim insisted would be “awesome” that really, really isn’t but is surprisingly enjoyable anyway. Though, maybe that’s the company. Or maybe Leonard’s just in a good mood. It _has_ happened before.

By the time it’s over Jim is only semi-conscious next to him on the couch and his feet have somehow crept up beside him, pressing into Leonard thigh. He gets up and grabs his spare blanket, draping it over his prone friend.

Jim’s eyelids flutter at the contact and he mumbles something that sounds like it could maybe be a suggestion that he get up and go back to his room.

“Don’t worry about it, kid,” Leonard murmurs. “Just don’t wake me up before the sun comes up or you’ll live to regret it.”

“Sure, Bones,” Jim mutters and then he’s out. For a second Leonard thinks back to the last time Jim fell asleep in his room and he can’t help but compare the two experiences. In a way, he thinks he likes it better like this. It isn’t everything, maybe, but it isn’t giving Jim any reason to leave him, either. Anything but this, this friendship—whatever this was—it would burn fast and bright and leave him completely burned out afterwards. This is what he wants, he thinks, looking down at Jim affectionately. Just like this.

He climbs into his own tiny bed and he sleeps until the sun is well above the horizon.

~

~

October brings with it many things. The god-awful Halloween decorations all over the walls of the hospital are one. The bowl of candy at the nurses’ station is another. And if Leonard has things to say about the unhygienic practice of keeping food in communal bowls he keeps his grumbling to a minimum when Rodriguez starts setting the chocolate peanut butter cups aside for him in her drawer.

Another thing that October brings with it is his birthday. Somehow it hangs heavier on him. Being one step closer to thirty should be no big deal, he’s still young. But being a student again, no longer married, living in a tiny economy apartment, he feels like he’s moving backwards.

Leonard has never been one to mourn his misspent youth, mostly because he’d spent the majority of it working his ass off to have three degrees and a successful career by his mid-twenties. But as the days tick by, getting closer and closer to the day, he starts to feel smothered under the heavy feeling that he is wasting his life.

What is he doing here? He doesn’t like space, he doesn’t want to explore the universe. He’s spending his days studying languages he has no use for and combat techniques he thoroughly disapproves of as a doctor, all the while working in a hospital where he practically has to sneak around just to get any work done.

By the time his birthday finally does arrive he’s seriously considering just quitting while he’s less behind and getting a _real_ job. He’s sniping at nurses and patients alike, even Chapel has had to deal with his temper and he’s already reduced one intern to tears.

Jim is waiting for him outside again when he leaves the hospital. Leonard isn’t surprised to see him; it’s become something of a habit for whichever of them is free first to wait for the other. He really should get some more friends. He thinks of the people he is leaving, hard at work inside the hospital. Or at least some more friends that have the same off time as he does, he decides.

He’s decided this before but in the end he never does. When he’s with Jim he doesn’t really feel like anything is missing.

Jim slings an arm over his shoulder and it’s a testament to how close they’ve become over the last several weeks that Leonard doesn’t shrug him off or, given his mood, just elbow him in the ribs.

“Bones, my friend, I hope you’re prepared to drink to this momentous occasion,” Jim says as he all but drags him in the direction of the road.

Leonard grunts his assent and lets Jim lead him away, scowl still firmly place. He’d go, but he never said he’d go cheerfully. Though he could probably get Jim to buy tonight considering the occasion, that’s something at least.

Though how Jim even knows it’s his birthday he has no idea and he doesn’t want to think too hard about it. The kid’s a genius but he has no respect for personal boundaries.

In the end Jim does pay, and he spares no expense. Drink after drink finds its way into Leonard’s hand and in no time at all he’s forgotten what he was so pissed off about in the first place. Not long after that he also forgets his comm code and the name of his first girlfriend.

Jim gets them both back to Leonard’s room sometime before midnight, Leonard’s not sure how and given that Jim is at least nearly as drunk as he is, it’s not something he’s going to want to examine in the harsh light of day either.

Collapsed and giggling on the floor where he didn’t quite make it to his couch, he drunkenly orders the lights on. He gives up after three tries and three failures. There’s enough light coming in through his window to see by anyway.

Leonard isn’t always a silly drunk, but there’s just something about Jim. For all the man drives him up the wall, he also keeps Leonard from feeling sorry for himself.

Jim suddenly appears above him. He looms there for a moment, laughing right back at him, his eyes all squinty like they get when Jim really smiles, and then he reaches a hand down and grasps Leonard by the forearm.

“C’mon, man. The floor looks hard,” he says and gives a tug.

Just as Leonard tugs the other way. Jim seems to teeter for a minute, the smile falling off his face and his eyes growing comically wide, before he comes tumbling down. He glances off the coffee table, lands heavily on Leonard and begins to roll off to the side, stopping when he hits the side of the couch.

There is a muffled “ow” and then silence.

Leonard dissolves back into giggles. After a moment Jim joins him.

“The floor _is_ hard,” Jim complains, managing to sound petulant through his laughter. Leonard just laughs harder. He can feel Jim shaking against his side.

“ _You’re_ hard,” Jim accuses from where he is still lying against Leonard.

“Not even a little bit,” Leonard responds, because he’s drunk and it’s the truth.

Jim lifts his head at that and gives Leonard a speculative look. At least, it would be speculative if he were sober, now it’s really just a lopsided sort of squint.

That look should probably worry Leonard but he’s having a hard time caring about much of anything just at the moment. When Jim leans in he should _definitely_ be worried but he doesn’t realize that until he feels Jim’s lips warm on his jaw.

Even then it takes him another minute to do something about. The feel of Jim’s mouth on his neck, at the collar of his shirt isn’t something he’s eager to lose, but he has enough presence of mind to know that they can’t do this.

“Jim,” he says, even as he arches his neck. Jim hums into the skin of his throat, working his way back up, and Leonard would be lying now if he said he wasn’t a _little_ hard. “Jim, you need to stop. Stop.”

He does, but he doesn’t move away and Leonard can still feel his warm breath against his ear. “Why?”

“We’re drunk,” Leonard replies but that doesn’t seem to be enough of a reason not to do this for Jim.

“I often am when I get laid. We were drunk last time,” Jim says against his neck. He’s not kissing him anymore, but he might as well be.

“I don’t want to be your fuck buddy,” Leonard grits out. He’s more than a little hard now.

Jim pulls back at that, just enough that he can look Leonard in the eye. Leonard’s not sure what he finds there but whatever it is Jim seems to sober up pretty fast.

“Right,” Jim says, pulling away and standing up. “It’s getting late. I should head home. Happy birthday, man.” He tosses Leonard a smile but his eyes don’t get squinty like they should.

“Jim, wait.” Leonard has no idea what he’s going to say, just that this is exactly the kind of situation he was trying to avoid – the awkward kind.

“No, Bones, we’re good. Just get some sleep. I’ll swing by in the morning and see how you’re doing.”

How Jim can even string that many words together, he’s not sure, but he doesn’t know what to say to that either. He just watches from the floor as Jim waves one last goodbye and lets himself out, leaving Leonard alone in his dark apartment.

Fuck.

He starts to get up but finds he really doesn’t want to exert the effort. Has he mentioned “fuck?”

Jim is a friend like he’s never had before. And Jim has to know he just doesn’t want to fuck this up. He has to know. Leonard should probably tell him anyway. He should also move his ass to the bed before he regrets it in the morning.

Neither of those things are happening tonight. He falls asleep on the floor.

~

Jim stops by the next morning, as promised. Leonard is still bleary eyed, dressed in yesterday’s clothes when he hears the door chime. He shuffles over and opens the door, letting Jim without a word and then shuffles back over to his bag to see what he’s got on hand to treat a hangover.

Just something for the headache. He grimaces and hypos himself in the arm before silently offering the same treatment to Jim, who refuses. Once he’s downed a full glass of water he turns to Jim and croaks, “Hi.”

Today is a bad day to have a hangover. What the hell was he thinking yesterday, getting so drunk? He remembers the whole night though it’s foggy, which is fitting since that’s very much the way he experienced last night in the first place.

A glance at his clock tells him that he has hand to hand in a little over an hour and he’s switched shifts with Dr. Johnston so he’s going to be at the hospital until the small hours of the morning. Shit.

Jim just shifts his weight back and forth, rocking on the balls of his feet until Leonard stop moving around the apartment and gives him his complete attention.

“Good morning,” Jim offers more cheerfully than Leonard’s own greeting had been. He is clearly not suffering from the same hangover Leonard is. That’s okay, Leonard will get rid of it at the hospital. There’s certainly something to be said for being a trained medical doctor in situations like this one.

He leaves Jim in his living room while he gets ready for the day; this is routine by now. The silence hangs over them awkwardly as they walk together to Leonard’s first class. He won’t see Jim again until tomorrow but they can’t seem to manage more than a half-assed, “Later, man” while they both avoid looking each other in the eye.

God dammit, things better go back to normal soon.

~

Chapel seems ready to forgive him for being an ass yesterday. Provided he would just stop being an ass.

He can’t help it; he’s in a fucking awful mood. He goes over it again and again in his head, wondering if it would have been better if he hadn’t stopped Jim. It was hardly like he wasn’t enjoying himself, he just couldn’t stop the inevitable end from playing out in his head.

First they fuck once or twice, then it becomes a _relationship_. From there only bad things can happen and he’s been down that road once already. He’ll be damned if he’s doing it with Jim. He’d much rather hang onto what he’s got: he’s happier now than he’s been in a long while.

Why can’t Jim just see that?

~

Leonard wakes the next morning to the sound of his door chime going off. _11:09_ blinks at him from his bedside table, so he supposes he can’t ream his visitor out for bothering him at an ungodly hour. Sure as hell _feels_ early though.

The chime rings again and he heaves himself out of bed. “Keep your pants on! I’m coming.”

Jim Kirk’s grinning face greets him when he palmed his door open.

“Morning, Bones. Personally I think you’d come faster if I took my pants _off,_ ” Jim greets and he pushes past him.

Leonard tenses a little, but pointedly ignores him. Things like that come out of Jim’s mouth on a regular basis, but usually not within days of an incredibly awkward encounter like the one of his birthday. He can’t help but notice that Jim can’t quite look him in the eye when he says it.

“Why are you here?”

“I missed you?” Jim is obviously trying to get things back to normal, even if he’s trying a little too hard. Leonard can get onboard with that. He certainly wants things back to normal.

“I’m not getting you more free condoms from the clinic.” Leonard flops back into the cushions and throws an arm over his eyes. If Jim can pretend it never happened, so can he.

“How ‘bout breakfast?”

“I’m not getting you that from the clinic either.”

“Alright, I’ll settle for the generous gift of your company in the mess,” Jim says like it isn’t what he was after all along.

“If I take a shower before we go will they still be serving breakfast?”

“No, but they do serve coffee with lunch.”

“You drive a hard bargain. If it’s not that flavored shit then I’m sold.”

“Hazelnut is delicious, Bones. Enjoy the finer things in life.”

Leonard harrumphs.

“They have regular coffee, too,” Jim concedes and Leonard nods but doesn’t make any move to get up. He’s just gotten comfortable again. If Jim is going to wake him up to keep him company in the mess, he can damn well wait.

And he does. They sit in silence for a minute before Leonard feels the awkwardness begins to creep in again, whether real or imagined, and he suddenly needs to be doing something.

Jim watches Leonard walk past him to grab a towel. “Have fun in the shower,” he says and the lack of lewd follow-up rings louder than the words he actually does say.

The water is hot and does a decent job of waking him up. A cup of coffee would certainly finish the job. Christ, he’s tired. Why didn’t he become an accountant so he could keep a regular nine-to-five schedule again? Oh yeah, because he hates math, and ties and everything that comes with being an accountant. Dammit.

When he’s clean he wraps a towel around his hips and opens the door, once again to the sight of Jim. This time Jim isn’t grinning, he’s grimacing and rubbing awkwardly at his ribs under his left arm.

When he sees McCoy though the grin is quick to return and the hand drops into his lap where a PADD – McCoy’s – is resting.

“Put some pants on so we can get out of here. Or don’t, if you want to stay in,” Jim suggests, his eyes crinkling.

They’ve been friends for a few months now and McCoy can tell when Jim is flirting with him because he’s bored, when he’s flirting because he’s drunk and when he’s flirting to deflect. This is definitely the latter. McCoy raises an eyebrow–a silent communication that he is not as big an idiot and Jim seems to think he is–and begins rifling through his closet for the civvies he purchased with Jim in September. He takes them back into the bathroom with him, away from Jim’s overly curious gaze and obnoxious commentary.

His shirt is rumpled but it’s Sunday morning and he’s got no place to be. Except for the mess and really, who the hell cares. He leaves the top few buttons undone and rolls the sleeves up, deciding to forgo tucking it in. Has he mentioned it’s Sunday?

He leaves the bathroom again, this time Jim is sprawled over his couch with one leg hanging over the arm. He glances over, takes in McCoy’s bare feet and spiky wet hair and goes back to reading whatever he’s finding so interesting on McCoy’s PADD.

If he’s downloaded porn to that thing, he swears to God…

Once his shoes are on and he’s neatly groomed he looms over Jim and scowls. “C’mon lazy-ass. You’re holding us up.”

Jim glares back but doesn’t bother to hide the small smile tugging at his lips as he leads the way out the door.

McCoy smiles at the back of his head. They’ll be okay.

~

As it turns out, they are still serving breakfast when they arrive. If rubbery eggs and floppy bacon can be called breakfast; McCoy isn’t so sure. He opts for lunch.

Pasta of some kind, in some sort of sauce. It’s red; that probably means it’s made out of tomatoes.

Fine dining this is not.

His side salad is mostly iceberg lettuce and he has a few choice things to say about the nutritional value of this kind of thing, but he realizes it’s probably fortified with all sorts of things that lettuce never sees in nature, so he keeps his mouth closed. This time.

No classes today, no work today, just a mountain of homework for both of them and a list of medical reading for Leonard that can wait until tomorrow as far as he’s concerned. They share a leisurely lunch, falling back into their comfortable banter.

When they get up to go Leonard watches Jim carefully balance his tray with one hand, keeping his left arm tucked tight to his side. He frowns and continues to watch as Jim returns his tray, his arm still tucked against his body instead of holding the tray or swinging freely at his side.

“C’mon,” Leonard says, gesturing for Jim to follow him back to his room. Jim doesn’t argue, or even ask. It’s rare they go anywhere near Jim’s room, home of Gregory the gorilla. In fact, it’s never happened after the first time.

“Take off your shirt,” he says to Jim as soon as the door is closed behind them.

Jim’s mouth falls open and his eyes grow wide. “ _What?_ ”

Leonard resists the urge to roll his eyes only because he knows this is awkward territory for them right now. “Let me see your ribs.”

Jim’s face immediately closes off. “Why?”

Leonard does roll his eyes this time. “Because you’ve been favoring one side since you got here this morning, you wince every goddamn time you move and you were breathing funny at lunch. Take off your damn shirt, Jim.”

Jim just looks at him for a minute, probably trying to figure out if he can get away with a flat our refusal. He can’t. With a nod he reaches down and begins the slow process of lifting his shirt up. Leonard helps.

Nope, this isn’t awkward at all.

Jim’s shirt peels away to reveal ugly, mottled bruising along his left side. Leonard would wince in sympathy if he weren’t so pissed off.

“Dammit, Jim. You need to go to the hospital. You have cracked ribs.”

“I’m fine.” Jim’s voice is tight with pain just from the gentle pressure of Leonard’s fingers.

“You’re _not_ fine. Or did you miss the part where you _broke your chest?_ Why didn’t you go to the ER?”

“Hey, that’s why my best friend is a doctor,” Jim says with a charming smile. Leonard wonders if that ever actually works on anyone.

“I shouldn’t treat you, Jim,” he says grimly, even as he’s getting his tricorder out and checking the location of the fractures. “We’re not supposed to treat close friends and family for a reason.”

“Bones, I just don’t want to go to the hospital, okay.” Something in his voice catches Leonard’s attention and he swallows the lecture building in his throat.

“I can tape them for you, but if you want them taken care of properly you’re going to have to,” he says, far more gently than he had intended.

Jim thinks about it for a second and nods, more to acknowledge that he had heard than in any sort of agreement. Leonard applies several strips of tape to Jim’s side before allowing him to pull his shirt back down.

“You do need to get those fixed. You’ll be out of commission for months otherwise and I know you’re on an accelerated program. You can’t afford to retake your combat classes.”

Jim nods again. “Alright, I’ll let you do your thing, let’s go.”

Leonard hesitates a moment. “I really shouldn’t treat you, Jim. I’ll take you in and make sure you get seen quickly but I’m going to have Piotr see you.”

Jim balks but quickly shifts gears, giving Leonard a charming smile that he can tell immediately is bullshit. “Piotr’s a nice enough guy, Bones, but he’s not you. Besides, what could happen? All you have to do is stick me under the regenerator and hit the on button.”

Eventually Leonard gives in. He’s not hard to convince, really. It’s not like he actually wants any off Lemley’s idiot staff poking at Jim.

When he does finally have Jim under the regenerator and he’s pulling up his medical file to make a note of the treatment he finds something that throws him for a loop.

“Jim. I’m listed as your doctor in your file,” he says flatly, but the question is clear.

“Well, yeah. If I’m ever found unconscious or something I want to make sure they don’t stick me with some quack,” Jim replies from his position on the bed, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world.

Leonard doesn’t say anything at all, just tries to ignore the cold feeling of unwelcome responsibility. Tries to forget why he can’t be the doctor for the people he cares about.

In the case of Jim it is immediately obvious that if Leonard doesn’t treat him, Jim will make sure nobody does. He’s not sure what the kid has against doctors, and he’s not going to ask. Jim will tell him or he won’t. He just tells himself that he can be Jim’s doctor, that what Jim needs is a doctor he can trust. That it’s for the best this time.

 

 


	4. Chapter 4

Leonard is standing in the waiting room, making the last few notes on his PADD before he hands it back to the triage nurse when he comes in. When Leonard hears the whoosh of the door he gives it a cursory glance and goes back to his PADD. About half a second later it sinks in that the man by the door is Jim, and he’s clutching his hand to his chest.

“Dammit, Jim!” He tosses the PADD onto the desk and strides over to where Jim is standing, pulling his hand away from his body to get a better look. “What the hell did you do?”

“Hurt my hand,” Jim replies glibly.

“I see that,” Leonard growls. “ _How_ did you manage this exactly? You were just here last week. You couldn’t stay out of trouble for a whole seven days, could you?”

“Apparently not.” Jim at least has the decency to look sheepish at that. “Can we, uh, move out of the doorway, at least?” he asks as Leonard turns his hand this way and that, poking here, prodding there.

“Sure,” Leonard says with one last poke, pulling a grunt of pain out of Jim. “Follow me.”

Leonard stalks through the doors leading to the nearest back of exam rooms, not bothering to wait for Jim.

When Jim enters the room behind him Leonard just gestures for him to take a seat and reaches silently into a drawer for a hypo.

“So,” Jim says to fill the silence, “think it’s broken?”

“No,” Leonard replies shortly.

“Well, it hurts like a son of a bitch,” Jim offers conversationally and then hisses sharply. “And I can’t move it.”

“That’s because you dislocated it.” He turns back to Jim and brandishes his hypo. “This is for the pain,” he offers belatedly as he is jabbing Jim with it.

“Christ. For _causing_ pain, you mean?” Jim demands.

Leonard gives him a disapproving look and pulls his hand out in front of him again, inspecting it briefly before deftly pulling and moving the finger back into place.

“Fuck!” Jim yelps. “Warn a guy!”

Leonard just frowns at him and sets about splinting his finger in pointed silence.

“What the hell, Bones? You’re acting like I broke _your_ finger or something.”

“It’s not broken you idiot; it was dislocated. Now it’s not, and it will stay that way if you can manage to leave it alone for a little while.”

“Can’t you just run a regenerator over it or something?” Leonard’s frown grows blacker.

“That’s not a substitute for letting it rest. I’ll do something for the ligaments before you leave but you’ve put them under strain, Jim. You need to give them a break and let them recuperate or this is going to continue to happen.” Once the words start coming he’s finding them difficult to stop. He’s really building up steam now. “I know I agreed that I would be your doctor but that wasn’t a goddamn invitation to injure yourself on a regular basis. I _will_ treat you; that doesn’t mean I want to have to do so just for the sheer joy of it.”

Jim studies him for a minute and licks his lips. “Right,” he says, looking down at his hand.

But Leonard isn’t done. “I don’t know what stupid things you’re doing that you keep getting injured but for the sake of my sanity would you knock it the fuck off?”

Jim looks like he’s starting to get pissed off right back, but he seems to realize it isn’t worth it. He gives Leonard a sharp nod. “I’ll see what I can do,” he says shortly, and then he is gone before Leonard can even remind him about the regenerator.

Leonard puts his supplies away and slams the drawer closed. He hears the sound of something breaking inside and he resists the urge to kick something. Dammit! That just fucking figures.

~

Leonard has just poured himself a drink when the door chimes. He thinks about ignoring it, he’s not in the mood for company, or even rudimentary social interaction really, and he knows he hasn’t ordered food so there’s no hope it’s just the delivery man.

Leonard sighs to himself and opens the door. Jim is fidgeting in the hall on the other side. Leonard finds his jaw clenching automatically, they didn’t leave things in a good place earlier, though he’s as mad at himself as he is with Jim.

They stare at each other for a moment, each willing the other to make the first move, neither willing to be the first to say sorry. “C’mon in,” Leonard says, before the silence has a chance to get truly awkward. It’s not sorry, but it’s enough for Jim because his shoulders relax as he passes Leonard and steps into the room.

Once inside though things start to become tense again. It’s clear Jim has something to say, he’s here for a reason, but it’s just as clear that he doesn’t know where to begin. Leonard takes pity on him. Well, sort of.

“Sit down, you’re making me nervous,” he says gruffly as he heads back to the table where his glass is resting. “D’you want something to drink?”

“Please,” Jim says, relieved at the distraction.

Leonard pours him a glass of bourbon, grabs his own, and takes a seat in the armchair kitty corner to the couch, turning his body so he is facing Jim. “Okay,” he says. And that’s it. He’s not apologizing for his tear earlier until he finds out why Jim is here; and possibly not even then. Sorry isn’t something he does often, and he’s sure as hell not sorry for not wanting his friend hurt.

Jim licks his lips again, a nervous action that’s as distracting to the viewer as it is habitual for Jim. “I… uh…” This isn’t like Jim. Jim is cocky. Jim is an ass. Jim is _not_ unsure of himself. But Leonard has already offered as much of an olive branch as he’s going to, Jim will just have to figure it out himself.

“I shouldn’t have just walked out like that,” Jim admits. Once he finds them, the words flow out of him with ease. Jim isn’t one that can’t admit when he’s wrong, he’s just unaccustomed to _being_ wrong.

“No, you probably shouldn’t have.” Leonard agrees, but there is nothing accusatory in his tone now.

“I know you don’t want to treat me –“ Jim begins but Leonard cuts him off.

“Dammit, it’s not that I don’t want to treat you; it’s that I don’t want to _have_ to treat you. I want you to keep your ass out of the ER in the first place! It doesn’t mean I want somebody else treating you when you get injured, I just want you to stop getting yourself hurt in the first place. Is that so Goddamn hard?”

Jim looks down at his hand, where his middle finger is still splinted and immobile, and back at Leonard, looking him straight in the eye. “Sometimes it is.”

“Why?” Leonard demands.

“Jesus, Bones!” Jim erupts. “You got here with a handful of degrees under your belt and a resume that your recruiter probably masturbated to when he saw it. You know what I brought with me? A juvenile record and a marketable last name. Half my teachers have me on this ridiculous pedestal and the other half are just sure I’m riding on my dead dad’s coattails, and that’s not to mention the other cadets or the fucking brass, so you know what? I’m sorry if I’m not just coasting through my time here like a good little cadet.”

Leonard reels back incredulously. What? Where the hell is this coming from? He’s not sure if he’s angrier at Jim for never mentioning any of it, or at himself for not even realizing anything was going on.

“You’re right,” he says softly and it’s Jim’s turn to be surprised.

“What?”

“You’re right, I should have asked. I didn’t, I just assumed. And I don’t know what the fuck is going on with you, but you know what? You don’t _tell_ me, so it’s hardly a surprise.”

Jim frowns but doesn’t interrupt him, not that he could get a word in anyway.

“I don’t know anything about you, Jim! I know you grew up in Iowa and that you got in a bar fight the night before you got on the shuttle. I know Pike recruited you in that bar, but I don’t know why you left home and came here. I don’t know WHAT you left when you came here. The only things I know about you, Jim, are the things _you_ tell me, so if you want me to be understanding then fucking spit it out already.”

Jim studies his shoes for a second before looking into Leonard’s eyes. “Okay,” he says.

“Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Well, good then,” Leonard says a little awkwardly and silence falls around them again. The silence is less tense, less expectant, but it is still charged.

This isn’t about Jim’s tendency to get himself injured anymore, just like it isn’t about Leonard’s willingness to treat his friend. This is about whatever it is lying under all that, whatever it is that’s bothering Jim that he doesn’t want to talk about.

Jim takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. “They’re right.” Jim’s posture is tight, almost defensive and for a second he can’t seem to make eye contact. “The ones that think I only got in because of who my dad is, they’re right. But that’s not _why_ I’m here.”

Leonard doesn’t really know what he’s talking about but that’s not the right question to ask right now. “Why are you here?” he asks, hoping it _is_ the right question.

“Because I want to be.” Jim shrugs and that’s all the reason either of them needs. It’s better than Leonard’s reason for being here: _I had nowhere else to go._

Jim huffs a soft, bitter laugh. “You know the really fucked up thing? I’m fucking _acing_ my classes. And I don’t know if my professors are more pleased or pissed off about that.” Leonard raises a questioning eyebrow and Jim just shakes his head in bemusement.

“I mean, your dad blowing himself up for the Federation will buy you admission, but it doesn’t make your grades for you. I’m sure my Warp Mechanics professor still thinks I’m paying someone for the answers.”

Oh, fuck. This time when Jim mentions his dad Leonard realizes who he must have been. Fuck! How had he been friends with this kid for over two months and not realized he was the son of George Kirk. Yeah, the Kelvin was destroyed over twenty years ago – almost twenty-three, his brain helpfully supplies – but it’s not like he hadn’t taken Federation history classes. He even remembers the news story. He’d been six and Jim – Jesus, Jim had just been born. On the shuttle, unless he was mistaken.

“Kid, I’m an idiot.”

“What? No, it’s not your fault she thinks I’m an ass. Not sure it’s mine either, but you know what I mean.”

“No, I mean… Jim, you never talk about your family. I didn’t realize…” Didn’t realize what? That your dad was a famous dead guy? That Starfleet politics were such a major deciding factor in your admission? That you probably have daddy issues out the wazoo?

Jim just blinks at him. “Wait. Really?”

“I’m sorry.” Leonard’s not sure what to say. He’s not sure how hurt Jim’s going to be.

Jim bursts into laughter, so apparently not very. Wiping tears from his eyes, Jim slings an arm around Leonard’s shoulders.

“Jesus, Bones. I love you, man. Oh, Jesus.”

What the hell just happened?

~

Leonard is woken from his sleep by a banging sound coming from the hall. The clock on his bedside table tells him he’s only been asleep for about twenty minutes. Well, that explains why he feels like death, then. The banging comes again and this time Leonard realizes someone is knocking on his door.

Muttering to himself about idiots that can’t figure out how to use door chimes, he drags himself out of bed and opens the door, not even bothering to find his shirt.

“What?” he demands before he even sees who it is. It’s Jim. It’s always Jim.

“Hiya, Bones,” Jim says, trying for cheerful but severely hampered by his swollen lip. Leonard is immediately furious.

“God fucking _dammit_ , Jim. How many times are we going to have to do this? Get in here.” He grabs Jim by the arms and pulls him bodily into the room and manhandling him over to the couch.

“What did you do to yourself this time,” he asks.

“Not me,” Jim slurs and Leonard sincerely hopes it because of the alcohol in his system, not the pounding his face has obviously taken. “Can’t punch myself in the head that hard.”

Leonard rolls his eyes. “So you found some other idiot to punch your head for you. Wonderful.” He peels back Jim’s eyelids for a good look at his pupils. Jim’s eyes are darting all over the place but he can see clearly enough that his pupils are unequal. “Who punched you?”

“Don’t remember,” Jim says. “One of the big ones.”

“Well one of the big ones gave you a concussion. You’re not moving from this couch for a while, you’d best make yourself comfortable.”

Jim goes to lie down.

“Not that comfortable!” Leonard says, pulling him back into sitting position. “Now don’t move, I need to make sure your brain isn’t bleeding.” Leonard rifles through his things until he comes up with a medical tricorder. Hardly the newest model, but it will tell him what he needs to know.

“This really is getting ridiculous, you know,” he says, surprisingly calm.

Jim isn’t bleeding from anywhere but his busted lip as it turns out – thank God – but he’s still a bit out of it.

“Same guy you got in a fight with last time?” Leonard asks casually. He should probably feel bad for taking advantage of his friend’s condition to get information he’s proven he doesn’t want to share. Probably should, but he doesn’t.

“Think so. I dunno. The guys that Finnegan hangs out with are all dumb and ugly. They just sort of… bleed into each other.” Jim gestures with his hand, but it just sort of flops around on his wrist.

“Finnegan, huh? And who’s Finnegan?”

“He’s a… guy.” Jim elucidates.

“Uh huh, and what kind of guy is he?” Leonard presses, careful not to sound to interested. Even concussed he’s sure Jim doesn’t respond well to prying. It’s one of the things he’s learned about his friend in the few months they’ve known each other. Jim values very little as much as he values his privacy.

“The asshole kind,” Jim says, like that’s all one ever needed to know.

“I gathered that when you came in looking like so much raw meat,” Leonard replies dryly.

“He’s a cadet,” Jim expounds, starting to come back to himself. Leonard is almost afraid to ask how he got back to campus in his state. “Third year I think, I don’t even fucking know. I just know that he’s a prick and he likes to bully the first years and I don’t take it as well as he’d like. He was being a prick to Sonya tonight. You know tiny little Sonya? Yeah, he’s just a giant fucking douche bag and he deserved the sucker punch.”

“You sucker punched him?” Leonard is surprised. He knows enough about Jim to know he rarely throws the first punch. He’ll finish a fight, but he doesn’t like to start them. He actually believes in finding a non-violent solution to a problem, something Leonard can respect.

“Well, sorta. I gave him fair warning.” Jim mumbles. He is starting to doze and there’s really no reason to keep him awake anymore. The tricorder has put his fears to rest about Jim slipping into a coma or anything serious, the best thing for him now is rest.

“Okay, well do me a favor and stop fighting with this asshole, would you?” Leonard says.

“Sure thing, Bones,” Jim slurs sleepily, eyes closed, head lolling on the back of the couch.

Leonard pulls Jim’s shoes off and swings his legs up onto the couch. He isn’t going to lecture Jim on fighting right now, Jim probably wouldn’t remember it in the morning if he did. He’s just going to set his alarm and get a bit of sleep while he can, before he has to wake up and check on Jim again.

~

Leonard checks Jim over again in the morning, once he is awake and alert. Jim is more lucid in this state, but less forthcoming with the details.

“Alright, well you’re going to have a headache for a little while,” he tells Jim, repacking his tricorder.

“Yeah,” Jim says dulling, his hand already pressing against his skull. “You know, concussions hurt less when you’re not also hung-over.”

Leonard glances back over his shoulder at Jim from where he is putting his things away. He has half a mind to ask just how familiar Jim is with concussions but he’s pretty sure he’s not going to like the answer. Besides he has to get to work.

His greetings for the nurses are perfunctory at best and probably come across as more than a little dismissive. Chapel, who has grown used to his moods, just nods hello but Rodriguez looks like she’s going to ask him about it so he hauls ass down the hall.

Lunch with Piotr is quiet; he doesn’t ask. Piotr never asks.

The afternoon passes quickly, even if Leonard does feel like all he’s doing is following around other doctors and cleaning up their messes. It’s not that they’re all incompetent, just that the administration is a disaster, which is news to precisely no one.

He finds himself footloose and fancy free a little after four and this time it’s Leonard who’s waiting for Jim when he comes out of his Warp Mechanics class. The look of relief on Jim’s face is clear when he sees his friend waiting for him.

“Bones!” he yells, clapping another cadet on the shoulder in farewell, and then hustling over to where Leonard is leaning against the wall.

“You have no idea how glad I am to see you. I swear to god that woman thinks I’m the anti-Christ.” It’s no secret that Professor Margese doesn’t like Jim. It was generally a source of amusement for the two men, but at the tail end of November the end of the semester was looming closer and Jim does not appreciate having it taken out on him.

“C’mon,” Jim continues, hardly pausing long enough to loop an arm around Leonard’s neck and pull him away from the wall. “It’s Friday. We’re going out.”

Leonard stumbles after Jim but offers no argument. That’s what he’s here for, after all.

Dinner is a quick affair at the diner again and then they’re on their way to their regular bar. It’s been getting more crowded as the semester wears on and more of the cadets are wandering farther from campus to drink.

Tonight Leonard can tell something is wrong the minute they walk in the door. Jim stiffens before his entire body assumes an air of studied casualness that is anything but. Leonard follows his gaze to a man holding court with a couple of his buddies towards the back. His blond head turns in their direction and the sneer when he sees Jim is unmistakable.

From there the man’s eyes shift to Leonard, considering. Whatever conclusion he comes to he seems decide they’re not worth his time because he turns back to his friends and ignores them.

If possible, Jim’s shoulders get tighter when the man’s gaze shifts to Leonard, relaxing only when he turns away.

“Jim?” Leonard asks.

“Let’s get something to drink,” Jim says and walks away leaving Leonard frowning at his back.

“Who is that?” Leonard asks, coming up behind Jim at the bar. Jim thanks the bartenders for their drinks, taking one for himself and handing the other to Leonard who is not so easily distracted.

“Jim,” he says again. He feels like he’s a kindergarten teacher some times.

“That’s Finnegan,” Jim says lightly, clapping Leonard on the arm. “Drink up, Bones.”

Leonard watches Jim follow his own advice, downing the contents of his glass at a pace that can only result in him being violently ill on the way back to campus and possibly for hours thereafter.

Leonard takes a slow sip from his own glass. “Do you want to go somewhere else?”

“What? No way. I’m not going to let him chase us out of our own bar. Besides, he’s not coming over here. There are two of us and three of them; he doesn’t like his odds. Now seriously, you’re never going to get drunk at this rate.” Jim finishes off his drink and gestures for another as Leonard takes another slow sip.

“Getting drunk is not exactly my mission here,” Leonard replies, but there is a smile tugging at his lips. “It’s not where you end up, it’s how you get there.” He tips his glass at Jim as he imparts this sage advice and turns completely away from where Finnegan sits with his friends. Out of sight, out of mind, he tells himself.

He decides that is he’s going to pay this much for his buzz, he’s damn well going to enjoy it, punk cadet or no.

Intentions aside, he _is_ drunk by the time they leave.

“Jim, you gotta do something,” he slurs.

“What?”

“’Bout Finnegan. Guy’s a prick. You gotta do something about it. Don’t wanna keep patching you up forever. You gotta… gotta stop.”

“Do you want me to stop or do you want me to do something about it?”

What? Fuck, Jim needed to have more to drink, clearly. “Not punch him. You can’t beat the prick out him. Gotta do something… else.”

“Okay, man. Let’s get you home.” Jim’s shoulder finds his way under his arm and suddenly walking in a straight line gets a whole lot easier.

They’d talk about this later.

~

Saturday night starts out not that different from Friday. Leonard meets Jim to eat at a tiny, out of the way Chinese restaurant that has horrible service but the best crab rangoon he’s ever had.

Jim claims he prefers the service here over the place closer to campus, but Leonard is relatively certain that he’s just bitter that their usual waitress at the other place clearly likes him more than she likes Jim.

He has a laugh at Jim’s expense, like he always does when they get Chinese. For someone who prides himself on being good with his hands, the kid is really terrible at manipulating a pair of chopsticks.

When they’re both stuffed, Leonard pushes his plate away and leans back in his chair, eyes searching the room for their waitress. Naturally, she’s nowhere in sight. It might be a while before they get their check.

Jim tosses his napkin on the table, leans heavily on his elbows and burps daintily. Leonard has a theory, it goes like this: Jim Kirk was raised in a barn.

He just raises an eyebrow at Jim and takes a long pull on his straw.

“Did you get your partner assignment for the Basic Flight final yet?” Jim asks him.

Leonard nods. “Harris,” he says and Jim looks… relieved?

“Good. That’s good. He’s a good.”

“Well… good.” Leonard says with a wry twist of his lips. “What about you?”

“Leah Pawalik,” Jim answers, with a look that is decidedly lecherous.

“Right. And that’s the last I want to hear about it,” he says without bothering to hide his amusement. “C’mon, the weekend isn’t over yet and I’m too sober by half.”

“Just half?”

“Well, I do have alcohol in my room you know.”

“Right. Same bar as last night?”

Leonard nods. They both know it’s likely that they’ll see Finnegan again and it goes unsaid that that’s most of the reason they’re going back. It’s their bar, goddammit. They’re not leaving for Finnegan.

~

They were right; Finnegan is there. They spend the better part of the evening ignoring each other until a couple more of Finnegan’s friends arrive. Then Finnegan gets¬–brave isn’t the word but… loud.

“Kirk,” Finnegan says, coming up behind them and laying a hand on his shoulder. “do the professors you’re sleeping with for your grades know you’re stepping out on them with a nurse?”

Leonard doesn’t correct him, just takes long drink and looks him straight in the eye. He understands why Jim would be tempted to punch him.

“Does he wear a sexy nurse’s outfit for you?” Finnegan continues while Jim continues to ignore him.

“Do you?” he turns to Leonard, hoping to get a rise out of someone. McCoy just smirks. _Wouldn’t you like to know._

Finnegan returns his attention to Jim. “Did you take him home to meet your mother? Oh, wait. That’s right, your mother probably can’t stand to look at you.”

It’s pure BS from Finnegan’s point of view but Leonard knows how close it must hit to home, and if Jim’s tense shoulders are any indication now, so does Finnegan.

He doesn’t even remember doing it; one minute he’s got a drink in his hand, the next it’s on the floor as his fist flies for Finnegan’s face.

He clips him but that’s all it takes for what seems like half the bar to erupt and suddenly limbs are flying and he’s striking out indiscriminately at the press of bodies around him. He knows it’s just Finnegan and his friends but he’s still ridiculously out numbered and it crosses his mind that he has no idea what he was thinking.

Then he lands a good one on Finnegan’s ribs and suddenly he remembers. His satisfaction is short lived, however, because he catches an elbow to the face seconds later and hears a crunch he knows can’t be good, and that’s his professional opinion.

He doesn’t stop swinging; can’t stop, really, until he feels himself being dragged back and then the cool air of the outdoors, the angry shouts fading to dull background noise and they leave them behind.

He pulls free of the grasp–Jim’s grasp and leans with his hands on his knees. Swiping at his nose with the back of his hand leaves him with a throbbing face, streaming eyes and a very bloody hand.

Broken.

I should get this set, he says thickly with a glance up to Jim’s worried frown.

“Okay,” Jim says and that’s it. They’re heading back to Medical with Jim frowning at him silently all the way. He feels like he should say something but he has nothing _to_ say and frankly, his face fucking _hurts._

When they arrive, Leonard is relieved to find Piotr on duty. With his luck he wouldn’t have been surprised to end up with Kaya. By the time he’s made it into a room to have his nose set he’s surprised to find himself alone with Piotr.

Jim is just… gone.

~

Leonard wakes on Sunday morning with the sun streaming through the window he’d forgotten to close last night. It can’t be later than seven, which is entirely too early to be up, all things considered.

He’s frankly exhausted. He groans and rolls over onto his stomach, taking his blanket with him, and plants his face firmly into his pillow.

“FUCK!”

In an instant he is sitting up, eyes streaming and he gingerly touches his face. It hurts a hell of a lot more than it did a second ago. Stumbling blearily to the bathroom, he examines himself in the mirror.

There is still an ugly gash, scabbed over now, across the bridge of his nose. But at least his nose is on his face straight and the swelling has gone down considerably. Thanks to Piotr, the bruising has already faded to a greenish yellow that just makes him look sickly, rather than injured.

He wonders now, in the light of day with the haze of anger and alcohol forgotten, what the hell he had been thinking, attacking a man like that. Nevermind the fact that he had four men behind him, or that he hardly knew the first thing about fighting; in that moment he had wanted to do Finnegan some serious harm.

Then he remembers the tense line of Jim’s shoulder as he’d swallowed back his own anger at Finnegan’s words. He remembers the look on Jim’s face when he so casually mentioned that his mother was rarely home. That she preferred the empty darkness of space to her own sons. He remembers the cocky, self important look on Finnegan’s face and he’s filled with the urge to punch him all over again.

He grabs a washcloth from the cabinet and holds it under the running water for a minute. He dabs gingerly at his damaged face, grimacing at his own reflection in disgust. He’s a doctor, not a brawler. He should be treating the injured, not making them that way.

He can’t help it; he finds himself hating Finnegan in a way he’s rarely hated another person before. It feels bitter and twisted and it sits in his gut like a cold, hard weight.

He doesn’t know why Finnegan’s chosen Jim’s life to make miserable, but he chose well. Jim would put up with an awful lot and never ask for help. Jim is the kind of person that would handle his problems himself if it killed him.

But Jim is the last person in the world that deserves it.

In the few months that he’s known Jim, he’s come to recognize that the cocky jackass most people know doesn’t even begin to touch the brilliant, generous man that Jim Kirk is. He’s not sure if Finnegan just can’t see that, or if that’s exactly why he does the things he does, but Leonard doesn’t care.

Dropping the washcloth into the sink, he stares into the mirror, his own blank expression reflected back at him. He’d attacked a man, honestly wanted to _hurt_ him. He’d attacked a man for Jim.

Fuck.

Back in his bedroom his comm blinks at him, letting him know he has a message waiting for him. He ignores it, he knows who it is.

Grabbing his jacket he makes his way out the door. He needs to not be here for a while. He needs some space.

~

Leonard doesn’t return to his apartment until late in the afternoon. The sun is already nearing the horizon and he’s starting to get hungry.

First thing’s first. He presses the button to begin playing the message waiting for him, expecting to see Jim’s face fill his screen and dreading what he would find in those blue eyes. He isn’t sure what to expect. This isn’t the kind of situation he’s had the opportunity to observe Jim in before.

Would he be worried? Angry at him for stepping into a fight that was not his own? Or, perhaps worst of all, disappointed?

He does not feel the relief he expected when Jim’s face does _not_ fill his screen. Because it is still Jim’s voice he hears; asking Leonard if is he is okay, telling him he won’t be around today but to go ahead and leave a message letting him know how he is.

Jim _sounds_ fine. He doesn’t sound angry or even disappointed. But why a voice only message? Was he somewhere he couldn’t record a video comm? Leonard checks the comm code on the message; it’s from Jim’s room and he frowns. It doesn’t make sense.

Why didn’t Jim _want_ Leonard to see him?

Maybe it’s for the best. He’s not sure he wants to see Jim right now either. He still hasn’t wrapped his brain around the fact that he had bodily thrown himself at another cadet–for what? To protect Jim’s _honor?_ Not likely.

He threw himself at Finnegan because he was in a blind rage and wanted to hurt the man. He couldn’t lie to himself and say he did it for Jim. Though that did beg the question, why </i>did</i> he do it?

For himself, certainly, to satisfy his sudden burning need to beat his smug face in. But why?

~

They avoid each other rather neatly for four more days. How they manage that with an overlapping class schedule, Leonard isn’t sure, but it’s Friday again before he sees Jim.

He shows up at Leonard’s door, as he is wont to do, and he still has a greenish looking bruise spanning from his cheekbone to his jaw. Leonard says _still_ because the bruise is obviously nearly healed, but he’s one hundred percent certain that Jim did not have any such bruise when he last saw him.

The unbalanced feeling he’s gotten every time he’s thought of Jim this week is momentarily forgotten when he sees it. “What happened?” It comes out flat and angry, not exactly how he wanted this to go.

“Don’t worry about it. It doesn’t need doctoring.” Jim’s tone is just this side of angry too, though that might have less to do with Leonard’s fading bruises, and more to do with his not-at-all subtle avoidance of his friend over the past several days.

Leonard realizes that they are still standing in his doorway and takes a step back out of the way. “Why don’t you come in.”

Jim does, without a word. Once he is inside Leonard is surprised to find that he looks more hurt than actually angry. Okay, the set of Jim’s jaw is more than a little indignant, but he’s not tense. He looks almost defeated.

“Why wouldn’t you answer my comms?” Right to the point. Well, okay then.

“I just needed a little bit of time, Jim.”

“Look, I’m sorry about Finnegan, okay? Maybe we should have gone somewhere else.” Jim isn’t looking at him anymore; he’s finding Leonard’s industrial wall-to-wall carpet much more interesting, apparently.

“Jim, Jesus Christ, you have nothing to apologize for! If anything, _I’m_ sorry, okay? I don’t even know why I did that. I just…” He doesn’t know what he ‘just.’ It’s been days and he’s no closer to figuring out what he ‘just’ than he was Sunday morning when he left his apartment to figure it out.

“You just realized that Finnegan is an asshole.” Jim chuckles lightly. “You’d don’t have to apologize to me for punching the guy, Bones. God knows I’ve done it a few times myself,” he says, not looking guilty at all. Which is of course a dead give away. Well, that and the massive shiner he’s sporting.

Leonard’s eyes fly to Jim’s discolored cheek and when he looks back at Jim’s face he seems to be having trouble looking him back in the eye. “So, you want to tell me what happened to your face?” he asks, careful to keep his tone light this time.

“I went back. After I brought you here,” Jim says, almost like he’s daring Leonard to fault him for it. Well, that’s a dare he’ll gladly take.

“Dammit, Jim! You’re the one that pulled me off him! What the hell were you thinking? I’m pretty sure he was feeling some pain as it was.” There was no doubt about that. Leonard wasn’t on him long but he made sure he felt it.

“I pulled you off him because there were five of them, Bones! He broke your fucking nose! You really think I was just gonna write that one off? Besides, it’s not like I just ran back to the bar swinging. I found Finnegan on campus and we… had some words.”

“Words?” It is clear from Leonard’s tone that he thinks these words were more likely ‘right fist’ and ‘left fist.’

“Yes, words. I talked to him. He didn’t like what I had to say. I swear to you, I didn’t even throw the first punch.”

Leonard nods and looks at the floor, studying the spot Jim had found so interesting earlier, hands on his hips.

“Not that you have a fucking leg to stand on, metaphorically speaking,” Jim adds conversationally.

Leonard’s head snaps up at the sound of Jim’s voice and he nearly bites through the lips he’s worrying between his teeth, he’s so lost in his own thoughts. Jim’s words sink in and he gives a self deprecating laugh that causes the remaining tension to bleed out of both of them.

“No. I don’t suppose I do.”

~

The unfortunate thing about shuttle sims– okay, _one_ of the unfortunate things about shuttle sims was that you didn’t just get to do them once and be done. You had to do them over and over and then, and when you finally desensitized yourself to _that_ , you had to fly a real shuttle.

Leonard is thankful that first year students don’t actually have to fly a shuttle, but he knows he’s only postponing the misery. Besides, he’s still a long way from desensitized when it comes to the sims.

And now he’s paired with Harris, it’s an even more uncomfortable experience. Sure the guy’s good, but he isn’t Jim.

He hadn’t missed how Jim had made sure to line up behind him, to be on the same shuttle. Three groups to a shuttle and where Leonard went, so went Jim. It had gone a long way to getting him through it, without Jim ever having to say a word.

Now, watching Jim laugh and talk with the rest of the class, it strikes Leonard what an incredible friend he has found in the young cadet. He can’t remember the last time he had a friend so close, so _loyal._ He’s not sure he ever has.

Jim is the kind of friend he could have used when everything with Jocelyn was going downhill and it felt like his life was falling down around his ears. Hell, Jim is the kind of friend _Jocelyn_ should have been; supportive and giving, there when he needed and never asking anything in return that Bones wasn’t willing to offer.

Leonard is suddenly overwhelmed with appreciation for Jim. Thankfulness even. Thankful to whom, he’s got no idea, but he recognizes that he has found something incredibly valuable in his friend. He decides right then and there that he will do everything he can to be the same for Jim. Someone to be depended on, trusted, loved.

Someone that doesn’t leave you behind.

They’re going to be friends for a good, long time, he’s decided. For Jim he is willing to get on a ship and go out into space. For Jim he wants to explore the universe. And he promises himself then, that no matter what, he will never, ever leave Jim behind.

He turns back in the direction of his room, catching Jim’s eye and gesturing with his head. He hasn’t made it three steps before Jim’s warm arm is slung around his neck.

“Hey, Bones. Where’re we going?”

Jim is an amazing friend in the way Jocelyn never was. Maybe that’s what was missing. Maybe that’s why it went to shit.

Maybe.

Leonard smiles. “Home.”

He’ll think about it later.

 

 

end

  



End file.
